Govt’s Employment Equity report “shocking,” out of touch with reality – analyst
Few policies in South Africa have attracted as much attention as government's affirmative action efforts and employment equity targets. It's a difficult and emotional issue. On the one hand, it is absolutely true that South African workplaces need to transform and include more people from previously disadvantaged groups. A lot of people complain about this imperative, but it is true. That said, on the other hand, it is also true that companies simply cannot hire people who lack the skills, experience, and qualifications to do the jobs that need doing. Forcing companies to hire inappropriate employees to meet quotas erodes the country's competitiveness and hampers its businesses. Yet not transforming South African workplaces would be equally damaging to the country in the long term. It's a tough problem, and as this interview suggests, government must focus on enabling businesses to grow and hire more, and on educating South Africans to prepare them for the workplace. – FD
ALEC HOGG: The Cape Chamber of Commerce says the latest report by the Commission for Employment Equity (it's the 14th report that's been put together) is a disappointing and superficial document. Well, is it? Michael Bagraims, who is a labour analyst from Bagraims Attorneys, joins us in our Cape Town studio. 'Superficial'…'disappoint'…those are quite stern words from an organisation which, I guess, counts its words a lot more carefully, usually. Michael, are you as underwhelmed by this report?
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: I am. I think the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry is in fact, correct in what they have analysed and how they've looked at it. The other interesting thing is it needs to be noted that the Chamber of Commerce is the biggest in the country – actually, the biggest in Africa – and they are going back to their members on a regular basis for input. The reality of the situation is the report was not good. It doesn't help us. It doesn't take us into the future. The Minister of Labour, Oliphant, is merely screaming and saying she wants to add bigger fines. That doesn't help the situation. There's no such thing as a business today in South Africa, that doesn't want to employ more people in an equity portfolio. They want the people to come into the business. They want to hit their targets. They want to hit their numbers. They want to do more business. Everyone wants to do more business. What we need to look at and what we need to understand is what the Statistician-General is saying. We need to educate more people. We need to train more people. We need a workforce that can move upwards. What this report also doesn't do – and it's quite interesting to see – is that it doesn't tell us that business has, in fact, stagnated. We haven't employed more people. We're actually down one-and-a-quarter million people. How can you have the figures of employment equity rising when businesses are shrinking? This is only looking at the top half-percent. It doesn't look at rest of the business itself. The reality is this report – and the Chamber of Commerce is correct – is shocking, it doesn't look at the reality of the situation, and it certainly doesn't look at the way we should be going. We need suitably qualified people. Many businesses today are still advertising abroad to bring people into South Africa. That doesn't help us either. In addition, the Minister messed up with the demographics because she's looking for businesses with over 150 people at the top echelons of national demographics, which means you're going to suppress coloured people and Indians (the Natal coloured and the Cape). We're not going to have it. You can't retrench to make way for people who fit into the national demographic. That's illegal. What are businesses therefore supposed to do if they're actually shrinking and not growing? That's a problem.
ALEC HOGG: You make many good points there Michael, but the problem is you have social engineering occurring in South Africa, and the unintended consequences are what you're talking about – the practical things on the ground. How does one educate the people who are making the rules? How does one open their eyes to the reality?
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: Well, you need more people on that commission who have a business background. There's no one on the Commission who has a business background. We've looked at it. Half of the people on the Commission are from a communist background. The other half are social workers. You need people who have business expertise to get into the government echelons and say 'let's do this properly'. If you're not going to do it properly, social engineering is notoriously bad. We saw what happened in Nazi Germany. You saw what happened in Apartheid South Africa. You understood what took place in Malaysia when the Chinese just left and the economy collapsed. We don't want this to happen. We have difficult doing this as it is, and now you have people who want to bring in social engineering at its worst. Our government is not proving a point at all. Even the government itself is not improving its employment equity figures. Are they trying to hark back to Apartheid? Clearly not. What we need to do is we need businesspeople to come forward, volunteer, and to be appointed on these commissions and say 'how can we make this easier for people of colour to be able to move up into the top echelons of the business community. How can we make this social engineering fair?' Social engineering, notoriously, can go very, very wrong and we don't want to see that in South Africa. The business community is positive.
ALEC HOGG: You make an interesting point there. Are the people who are on this Commission, paid a lot of money? Is there an incentive for them to serve on it?
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: Well, there's a certain amount of, I think 'good for their egos'. I do think they are paid. I don't think they're paid a fortune, but one needs to look at how you put people into certain positions and make sure those people can implement what you want. I think all of us in South Africa today – most of us – and especially those in the business community, understand that we need to level the playing fields. We all understand that. However, you can't do it by whipping the business community and saying 'we're going to give you fines'. What you're doing then, is you're encouraging the business community to go out there and say 'well, we're going to retrench all the white people in our businesses and put in black people so that we can get our targets', and that's illegal in the first place. Being a labour lawyer, I'll have lots of work in the labour court saying 'you've unfairly retrenched' or 'not dismissed by operational requirements', so that can't be the answer. We need to grow the marketplace. We need to grow the business community. We need more business. That's the only way we're going to actually right the playing fields for the future. The reality of the situation is the business community wants that. They want to do business with government, with parastatals, and with big business. No one wants to say 'I'm only going be employing white people. I don't want to do business with anyone else'. That's silly, and for the Minister to believe that the business community is behaving that way, I think, is wrong. We need to get back to the drawing board.
ALEC HOGG: Michael Bagraim is from Bagraims Attorneys.