No-one does race wars quite like South Africans. If you follow almost any media you’ll know that the introduction into law of the Employment Equity Amendment Act has us at each other’s throats again.
The DA is taking the employment & labour minister to court to challenge new powers to impose racial quotas in the staff structures at all companies employing more than 50 people. For its trouble it is being accused of “finally” laying bare its racist soul for opposing yet another virtuous effort by the ANC to achieve racial redress.
DA supporters accuse the ANC of being wilfully blind to the folly of rigid quotas in transformation, the disincentive it poses to investment, and that the new law violates the right to equality and amounts to unfair discrimination.
As a white male aged 72, my sympathies are with the DA. The new law seems utterly foolish, but only if you accept two caveats. First, the DA is useless at making the case for business and investment. Its leaders have for 30 years focused on ANC corruption, incompetence and greed. They almost never make the case for growth or enterprise.
DA leader John Steenhuisen is now saying online that “jobs are coming” or some nonsense version of ritual ANC promises. Does he think he is talking to the unemployed? On its website the DA says it is taking the race quota law to the Constitutional Court because “real transformation comes through inclusive economic growth, not divisive race-based quotas”.
Yet the very term “inclusive growth” is an ANC trope for racial transformation that allows it to appear to be promoting some kind of growth when, in fact, no growth ever results from it.
The GNU will not bring growth back to this economy, and both parties will have to make critical decisions to survive it.
Second, the introduction of laws such as this by the ANC is entirely cynical. “Inclusive growth” has driven almost all of Cyril Ramaphosa’s policy efforts as president so far — from his investment conferences, which deliver less than half the money required to even slightly slow the rate of unemployment, to his newer “reforms”. But the “growth” in Ramaphosa’s “inclusive growth” is a fig leaf for redress, the latest iteration of which is a new R100bn Transformation Fund punted by trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau.
While government has been able to plough many billions of rand into transforming the economy so far, of economic growth there has been no sign for 18 years. There is absolutely no reason to hope the growth effect of the new employment quota laws will depart from the norm. As a driver of growth, transformation just doesn’t work.
Ramaphosa knows this, but he is never going to take on his party over transformation ideas even when they’re destructive. The way he works is to allow the party to make whatever laws it likes and then hope the DA takes them to court, and that the court does the job of knocking them down that he is so desperate to avoid.
However, it is important to understand what is wrong with inclusive growth. Transformation of a skewed economy like ours is vital. Actual growth, rather than inclusive growth, may be what’s needed, but even that might not be enough.
But those conversations won’t be happening inside either the ANC or the DA. It is fine for the DA to argue that “where we govern”, like the Western Cape, life is easier and maintenance is world class. But “where we govern” doesn’t get the DA from 21% of the national vote last year to 26% in 2029. More is required.
Building new sewer lines through Khayelitsha is obviously a good thing, but while the DA insists on sticking with the ANC inside the government of national unity (GNU) it is also stuck with “inclusive growth” and other worthless sermonising. The GNU will not bring growth back to this economy, and both parties will have to make critical decisions to survive it.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.