NEASA’s combative CEO Gerhard Papenfus comes out with all guns firing in this feisty conversation on Standard Bank’s refusal to back down on its mandatory Covid vaccine policy – an approach which has seen it locking horns with the banking trade union. SASBO has demanded the bank drops its policy, and reinstate 40 fired staff and numerous others who were suspended for refusing to have a Covid vaccine. Papenfus, whose organisation represents employers, blames another company still applying mandatory vaccines, healthcare company Discovery, as the instigator of needless labour friction on what he says has become “a dead issue”.
CEO Gerhard Papenfus on the whole vaccination policy
It makes no sense that some of the institutions persist with this policy. There was a point where there was uncertainty. Now, I respect first of all, the position of freedom of choice. Make your decision and live with it. That’s fine. NEASA really got involved in the debate when the mandates were introduced and we said, don’t do it. We did it for various reasons. It’s also to protect business because the onus was put on business to do it. Parliament doesn’t make the decision in terms of law of general application. You can discriminate against a person. There’s one piece of legislation where you can discriminate. That’s the Employment Equity Act. You can discriminate against a person on the basis of the colour of your skin. But that’s a law that went through parliament. It says for the purposes of transformation, you may discriminate, and that’s fair discrimination. What’s happened in this case, you may know in terms of a code discriminate, but it’s left for the employer to make that decision.
On Standard Bank’s decision to terminate employees based on vaccination policy
The fact that guys are big and important doesn’t cause them to make wise decisions. When we go back to the 2008 financial crisis and you listen to what’s happening there, guys were saying there were signs of the markets failing, but the banks aren’t that stupid. They weren’t going to do that. And we look up to people and they think, you can’t be that stupid. But I’m telling you, they are that stupid because more and more people realise that, and I’m talking about big business now that’s realised. Now we’re suspending this. And I mean, you can go through the list. There’s a few that persist with this. And I don’t know why.
On the danger for South African businesses if they continue with the policy
It makes no sense. The danger is over. And the fact is this current code puts an obligation on a business to do a risk analysis, where the business must justify why it doesn’t want to introduce mandatory vaccination. Now we’ve done that and we go into business and say, listen, don’t do it. It’s frankly impossible to do it. You can’t do it. How can you, as a businessman, make that call? You’ll have to get a health and safety expert in and not a normal expert but a special type of health and safety expert to justify why you don’t want to introduce mandatory vaccination. So this whole drive is to advise businesses not to do it. And if the Department of Labour comes in and they can come in and say, show us your risk analysis, refer them to us. It’s a joke. We could have made a lot of money out of this. We can’t do business and say, do it.
On other businesses who still persist with the mandatory policy
I blame a lot of this on Discovery. They took the lead very early and the world just followed them.
On whether he’s going to continue fighting the policy
I’ve got to continue. I’ve got to finish. People are losing their jobs. Employees are losing jobs. When people interfere with the freedom of a nation, you’ve got to stop it, because On we as a citizenry must protect our own freedom. We must fight for it. That’s what democracy is about. If you don’t like what people are doing, then you must go against them. And that saves a country. The citizenry must, must fight. And our freedom is so important. And, you know, what’s happening all over the world is a serious curtailment of freedom – in New Zealand, in Australia, in Canada, in the United States. We can’t allow it to happen here. So this is why I’m here, they are still allowing business to continue with this and as we speak today, there are employees that are losing their jobs.
On CCMA senior commissioner Richard Burns’ ruling that workplace vaccinations are unlawful
On the CCMA judgment, it doesn’t create precedent so each commissioner can make his own call, but we need to get this thing into the High Court and, if needs be, this thing has got to go to the Constitutional Court because here we have an opportunity. Now why didn’t NEASA enter into this fray of legal action long ago? We couldn’t. I cannot bring a case on behalf of an employee. I mean, our constituency is business. The last time the minister said business must do certain things. Businesses need to draft a code – and the moment the minister said business must do it, I said, okay, here I am.
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