Bee: Helping or Hurting?. Anthea Jeffery
stressed that whites were ‘over-represented’ at management levels as they made up only 13% of the economically active population but held a far greater proportion of management posts. By contrast, Africans – who then made up 73% of the economically active population – were severely ‘under-represented’ in senior positions. Again, this analysis overlooked the youthfulness of the African population, along with the fact that only 1.5% of Africans had the post-school qualifications often considered advisable for management posts.21
Many knowledgeable white public servants deemed surplus to requirements found their careers blocked and less experienced individuals appointed over their heads. This contributed to an exodus of whites and increased the scope for the ANC’s strategy of cadre deployment. By the end of 1998 some 60 000 civil servants (almost all of them whites) had left the public service, while a further 60 000 departed soon thereafter. Soon the exodus of whites accelerated further, contributing to what the Department of Public Service and Administration later described as ‘an almost 80% turnover in senior management personnel across all national and provincial departments between 1994 and 2007’.22
This fast pace of change gave the ANC considerable scope to deploy its loyalists to many public service posts, so as to consolidate its control over the levers of power and so advance its national democratic revolution. But in many cases these cadres were appointed to their jobs for their commitment to the ruling party, rather than their skills, so helping to cripple effective governance. Deploying cadres in this way was also in breach of a clause in the Constitution stating that ‘no employee of the public service may be favoured or prejudiced only because that person supports a particular political party or cause’. In 2008 a High Court decision in the Eastern Cape confirmed that cadre deployment conflicts with this constitutional provision, but the ANC has yet to abandon the strategy.23
In practice, the ANC’s determination to bring the public service under party control has severely weakened the state’s ability to deliver goods and services, especially to the poor. As The Economist has noted, no country is likely to develop and prosper without a competent and ‘independent class of public servants’ who can detach themselves from their political, ethnic, or other loyalties. Given the skills and experience of the pre-1994 public service, along with the role it had been playing since the late 1970s in rolling out housing, electricity, and other services in many African townships, the state machinery that the ANC inherited in 1994 could well have served this purpose. Instead, as affirmative action and cadre deployment have accelerated, so the capacity of the public service has declined.24
In addition, writes Peter Franks, a former deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Limpopo, appointments to public service jobs have come to depend primarily on political connections, which means that ‘incumbents often spend their time garnering political favour and looking for their next position – the job becomes something one possesses, and not something one has to do’. According to Franks, affirmative action and cadre deployment have thus contributed to a ‘perfect storm … of poor management, deficient and partial decision-making … excessive staff turnover … and high levels of financial and administrative corruption’.25
Black representation in management
Targets for employment equity at senior levels in the public service have steadily been raised. The initial goal, as reflected in the white paper in 1995, was for senior managers in the public service to be 50% black by 1999. In 2003 this target was increased to 75%, to be attained by March 2005. By then, 30% of senior managers were also to be black women. By 2005 these targets had almost been met, for black people held 70% of senior management posts and black women 29%. Targets for black women were thereafter increased to 50%. This prompted Mpho Letlape, head of human resources at Eskom, to say: ‘Over the next five years, as it embarks on its R84bn infrastructure expansion programme, Eskom has to appoint two new staff every working day – and it is adamant that one of them will be a black woman.’26
In April 2014 the Commission for Employment Equity established under the EE Act published its 14th annual report on employment equity, covering the period from 2013 to 2014. This report found that, among ‘all government’ employers in this period, Africans held 69% of top management jobs, 63% of senior management posts, 67% of jobs at the ‘professionally qualified’ level (formerly termed ‘middle management’), and 79% of skilled jobs. If coloured and Indian representation was taken into account as well, then black South Africans held 84% of top management posts. They also constituted 78% of senior management, 82% of professionally qualified staff, and 90% of skilled personnel.27
Given the age and skills profile of the African population, these figures are remarkable. Take, for instance, the commission’s figure of 69% for African representation at top management level in government, which comes close to the total African share (75%) of the economically active population. Yet in 2013 economically active Africans within the 35-64 age cohort from which top managers can realistically be drawn made up only 36% of the total economically active population. In addition, in 2012 only 992 000 Africans (4% of those aged 20 or older) had any form of post-school training. Moreover, figures released by Statistics South Africa in April 2014 showed that half (54%) of young people between the ages of 15 and 34 had no work experience at all, while 47% did not have matric.28 Such factors confirm that a 75% target for African representation at top management level is far too ambitious – and yet this target has already come close to being fulfilled.
The public service must have dug deeply into the ranks of black South Africans aged 35 and more to attain so high a degree of black representation at this most demanding level of management. This, in its turn, makes it all the more surprising that African representation at senior management levels – and among professionally qualified and skilled staff – has also come so close to demographic representivity. Overall, the commission’s figures point to an astonishingly fast pace of affirmative action in the public sector. This seems to have been achieved in three ways: first, by implementing rigid racial quotas rather than the more flexible ‘numerical goals’ mandated by the Employment Equity Act; secondly, by appointing black people without the necessary skills and experience; and, thirdly, by leaving posts vacant where no suitable black candidates can be found.
The use of racial quotas
The extent to which one government department – the South African Police Service (SAPS) – has been using rigid racial quotas, rather than ‘numerical goals’, came to the fore in 2012 in litigation before the Labour Court in Johannesburg. The case was brought by Jennila Naidoo, an Indian woman with 24 years’ experience in the police, whom the SAPS had refused to appoint to the post of cluster commander in Krugersdorp (Gauteng). Instead, this ‘level 14’ post had gone to an African male with an assessment score below that of Naidoo.29
When the matter came to court, the SAPS explained that its employment equity plan was based on the 2001 census, which showed that the population was 79% African, 9.6% white, 8.3% coloured, and 2.5% Indian. Its target for Indian representation was thus 2.5%, while its target for women was 30%. Since there were 19 positions to be filled at level 14, ‘the calculation for Indian females was 19 x 2.5% = 0.5 positions to be filled by Indians, then 0.5 positions x 30% [the female target] which equals 0.1 Indian females and that is rounded off to zero’. The ‘ideal’ position for the SAPS was thus to have no Indian women at all at level 14 – and that was why Naidoo could not be appointed.30
The Labour Court disagreed. Handing down his ruling in February 2013, Acting Judge Salim Shaik said the effect of the police’s employment equity plan was to deny Indians (and particularly Indian women) any representation at all at this senior level. It thus created ‘new de facto barriers to employment’ and resulted in discrimination on the grounds of both race and gender. This was contrary to the Constitution and the Employment Equity Act, which called for ‘equitable’ representation and a ‘contextualised approach’, rather than a ‘formulaic, mechanistic approach’.31
Added Judge Shaik: ‘In many ways the numeric target presents itself as a quota rather than a target … In terms of the Equity Act, employment barriers are prohibited. And so are quotas … It is … crass to say that the ideal for the appointment of Indians … is zero. This is to undermine the constitutional objective of non-racialism and non-sexism as it constitutes an absolute barrier that is based on a prohibited ground.