I have two major frustrations with the debate on employment equity and affirmative action. The first is in the conflation of targets and quotas. Those taking issue with the new regulations can be forgiven for conflating targets with quotas, because the regulations do the same thing.
To be clear, a quota is a number or percentage of posts at whatever level reserved for a particular category of employee; a target is the number or percentage of posts filled by a particular category you would like to achieve through consistent implementation of your employment equity plan. The former is a strict rule, with negative consequences for noncompliance; the latter is a monitoring and evaluation tool to evaluate the extent to which the strategy you have developed and implemented is achieving its desired outcome (namely, broader representation at all levels of employment).
The second frustration is that debate is generally evidence-free and reduced to accusations of being anti-transformation. This is especially since the ANC worldview is still so entrenched in the SA polity, that it has been difficult until now for most political actors and analysts to even conceive of a different way to achieve redress. When the DA advocates against race-based policies, it is not advocating against redress; it is arguing that the policy interventions should be targeted at overcoming the actual obstacles that still reduce too many people’s chances of living a life they value.
A person’s ability to achieve their ultimate potential is enhanced or obstructed by numerous factors throughout their life, starting with their mother’s quality and quantity of nutrition when they are conceived, all the way through their first 1,000 days, early childhood development, schooling and the social networks they develop, and (hopefully) work experience and lifelong learning.
Employers generally only get involved in determining the life chances of individuals quite late in the day. They may contribute to early childhood development (ECD) and education through their corporate social responsibility spending and providing bursaries for tertiary study as part of their recruitment strategy, but largely influence opportunities through recruitment, learning and development, and advancement. However, the interventions needed to maximise potential are very much in the mandate of families and the government — the latter through its support for ECD and the provision of quality education and cultural and sporting opportunities to build soft skills and social networks.
If the government is serious about employment equity, it needs to follow an evidence-based approach that comprehensively identifies all the obstacles and bottlenecks along the full life course of people growing up in different contexts, and focus interventions on removing obstacles, or helping people overcome them, and opening the bottlenecks. Some of those interventions will be for various departments of government; some will be for civil society and some for employers. Some will require partnerships across multiple stakeholders to succeed.
I don’t have a problem with an employment equity regulatory framework that requires employers above a certain number of employees (the cost of compliance as a percentage of employee costs should guide the threshold) to develop an employment equity plan, or even that they set targets for broadening demographic representation at all levels of their organisation. However, such plans — and the policy options underpinning them — should be based on the interventions identified in a diagnostic evaluation of their sector that are within their mandate to implement, and they should not be subject to sector-wide targets. Rather, they should be able to set their targets based on their particular context (their baseline and turnover rate of staff), as well as the trends in the pool of available candidates for recruitment or advancement, and what they believe their interventions will achieve.
Setting targets for an individual sector, let alone a company, based on the total population — whether at national or provincial level — ignores the obvious evidence of the pool of available candidates. At each stage of education, experience and advancement, demographics change due to the limitation of opportunity for some at previous phases of their life course. So, where along the life course is the critical constraint? And which role player in the system is best placed to deal with it?
Finally, companies should be accountable to their stakeholders — employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers and the communities in which they operate — for the implementation of their employment equity plan and the extent to which it achieves its intended outcomes, and not to the government. The regulatory framework should merely require that they have a plan and set targets; that they report to their stakeholders on progress; identify reasons for falling short of targets, where applicable; and review whether any adjustments to the plan are required, or whether any advocacy is required with other stakeholders that are limiting the effectiveness of their plan (for example, if there are too few people graduating with the necessary qualifications, or too few matriculants with good maths and science results).
The fact is that, in the absence of adequate and appropriate interventions in the early life stages to improve outcomes, the gap is far too large for employers to close on their own. Few people question the need for redress, but the government cannot abrogate its part in the delivery chain. Companies should be allowed to develop their plans and set their targets in the context of what the government has achieved to improve education outcomes and social capital so that the pool of qualified and skilled entrants into the labour force is less skewed by unequal opportunities provided to children and youth growing up.
It is certainly appropriate to aim for an economy as a whole that is broadly representative of our population at all levels, but achieving that is dependent on all role players in the development of our country’s human capital doing their part. However, as we zoom in to different places, life phases, sectors or companies, the reality of the specific context dictates what is possible. To ignore that is to set oneself up for failure.
Hazell is a policy adviser in the office of the mayor of Cape Town. He writes in his personal capacity.
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