Bee: Helping or Hurting?. Anthea Jeffery
growth, and the generation of new jobs, thereby making it harder for the unskilled black majority to climb the economic ladder. In addition, demand for skilled black people was already very high in both the public and private sectors, and would expand even faster as the economy grew. Hence, policies aimed at increasing skills and stimulating the growth rate would help far more in providing opportunities for all South Africans and overcoming apartheid legacies.10
The Democratic Party – now the Democratic Alliance – described the Bill as ‘a pernicious piece of social engineering’, which ‘reinstated racial classification’ and would bring about ‘an entirely new system of bureaucratic meddling in the affairs of private business’. The Bill was in any case unnecessary, said Democratic Party leader Tony Leon, as companies were already ‘as anxious as they could possibly be to appoint more black staff to senior positions’. Added Leon: ‘Their company images depend on it today. They are prepared to poach staff from other companies and waste money on token appointments because of this anxiety. The reason why black advancement is not proceeding more rapidly is no longer mainly because of racism but because of the shortage of trained and skilled black recruits.’11
However, these concerns were disregarded by most commentators, who played down the Bill’s likely negative impact. In media reports, several human resource (HR) consultants claimed that the measure required ‘no more than good management and good HR practices’. ‘Good employment equity is part and parcel of good people management, and good people management leads to increased productivity,’ they said. The main effect of the legislation, they added, would be to ‘upgrade skills and improve access to … opportunities, thus removing disparities in jobs and occupation’.12
According to these HR commentators, the Bill was both reasonable and practical, for its emphasis was on ‘consultation and participative decision-making’ and it was ‘not prescriptive’. The targets it required to correct the under-representation of black South Africans were nothing to be concerned about, for ‘the setting of targets was a familiar process for businesses, which already set targets for sales and manufacture’. The Bill was simply ‘a useful tool to help integrate the workforce of South African commerce, so that all people could compete equally and the legacy of the past could be overcome’. Moreover, the Bill was correct in recognising that ‘voluntary systems were ineffective’ and that ‘the state, rather than “the market”, must decide what’s best for business’.13
Many journalists echoed these assessments. A Business Day editorial (later reproduced in other newspapers) described the Bill as an ‘unobtrusive’ measure requiring no more than ‘the sensible affirmative action programmes good managers should be implementing in any event’. An article in the Financial Mail added that the Bill would play a vital role in requiring ‘employers to abandon irrational prejudices and, equally important, to undertake the planned training and development’ of black people.14
Business representatives at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) – an organisation established in 1995 to help reach agreement between the government, business and labour on social and economic policy issues – largely echoed these views. Though spokesmen for the private sector objected to provisions requiring business to narrow the ‘apartheid’ wage gap between management and unskilled workers, for the most part they endorsed the measure.
Vic van Vuuren, general manager of human resources at Sanlam and a representative of Business South Africa at Nedlac, said many companies were already doing what the Bill required. Hence, the law would simply ‘formalise’ their obligations and require other employers to follow suit. The Bill would generate no additional costs for business and would have little effect on employment levels since it required neither retrenchments nor the creation of new jobs. All it envisaged was ‘very healthy human resource plans’. HR management had not been given enough emphasis in the past and would now ‘have to be given the attention it deserved’, he said.15
The Institute of Race Relations, the Democratic Party, and a few other organisations that dared publicly to criticise the Bill were dismissed as racists by the government. President Nelson Mandela described them as ‘sirens of self-interest’, while the minister of labour, Tito Mboweni, said they were ‘short-sighted whites who wanted to cling to special and undeserved privileges’. The director-general of labour, Sipho Pityana, accused them of using ‘scare tactics’ that were ‘a figment of the racist imagination’. Various journalists took up this theme, saying that critics were simply seeking to protect white privilege and had opened themselves up to the charge of being ‘anti-transformation’.16
The government also took pains to reassure business that the fines envisaged in the legislation were no reason for concern. Said Mboweni: ‘These penalties should only worry the rogue employers who are hell bent on continuing their discriminatory practices. They should not worry the progressive companies that are serious about transformation, any more than you and I are worried about increasing penalties for road offences because, as responsible road users, we have no intention of violating the rules.’ The Department of Labour told Nedlac that the fines would apply only ‘for non-compliance on administrative measures’, and business seemed willing to accept this reassurance despite the Bill’s clear wording to the contrary. Again, journalists were quick to take up the government’s theme, writing that ‘the fines would apply only if an employer … simply ignored the Act – if he refused to draw up an employment equity plan or apply it’.17 The Bill was thus enacted into law in 1998 and brought into operation the following year.
Implementation in the public service
In 1993 the ANC and other parties to South Africa’s constitutional negotiations had agreed that existing public servants would have their security of tenure guaranteed for five years after the transition to majority rule. Though this was not written into the interim constitution, which took effect on 27 April 1994, Mandela took pains to reassure the white minority that the new government needed their skills to make South Africa work. He appealed to them not to emigrate, but rather to use their expertise to help build up the country. Most white civil servants were glad to do so – for white attitudes had changed profoundly in the previous decade – prompting the ANC to acknowledge that ‘established state institutions … [had] by and large co-operated with the new government’. A small number of civil servants resigned rather than serve the ANC, but the majority remained in their posts and stressed their willingness to implement new policies. ANC concerns about possible hostility to its goals from the public service thus proved largely unfounded.18
However, implementing affirmative action in the public service was also vital to the ruling party because it paved the way for the ‘cadre deployment’, or appointment of party loyalists, which it saw as necessary to bring all ‘levers of power’ under ANC control. In 1995 the ANC thus began to say that the five-year ‘guarantee’ of civil servants’ posts would apply only until the government had completed a rationalisation study, while Mandela added that the public service would never be accepted unless it was more racially representative. In the same year, the government followed up by releasing a White Paper on Affirmative Action in the Public Service, which stressed the need for management to be 50% black by 1999. According to the white paper, every national and provincial department would have to draw up a detailed affirmative action plan and present annual reports to Parliament on progress in its implementation. Funds would also be required both for retrenchment packages and for the training of new appointees.19
After the final Constitution was adopted in May 1996, the ruling party began strengthening its grip on the machinery of state. In doing so, it relied heavily on a constitutional provision saying that the public service needed to be ‘broadly representative of the South African people’. However, it disregarded the remaining terms of the clause, which made it clear that the goal of increased representivity had to be balanced against other values and principles. Those listed in the Constitution include ‘ability’, ‘fairness’, the ‘efficient, economic and effective use of resources’, and the necessity of ‘responding to people’s needs’.20
The ANC also began to claim that ‘incumbent [civil servants] were “racists”, “obstacles to transformation”, “defenders of white privilege”, “apartheid-era dinosaurs”, or “disloyal to the new South Africa”’. These