A report by IRR Legal claims there is discrimination within the SA Police Service (SAPS) stemming from the implementation of what the research and policy organisation calls “race-based” hiring rules in the police ecosystem.
However, the government and unions have rejected the report, saying it forms part of a broader campaign aimed at “rubbishing transformation policies”.
The government has passed several empowerment laws, including broad-based BEE (BBBEE) and the Employment Equity Act, to correct historical inequalities, promote inclusive economic participation, and advance transformation in the workplace and broader economy.
IRR Legal is anti-BEE, describing the policy as one of the biggest obstacles to growth in the country, while viewing the Employment Equity Act as unconstitutional, anti-growth and harmful to empowerment.
According to the IRR Legal report, released in Johannesburg on Thursday, black males were at the highest risk of suffering negative discrimination under BEE rules at the SAPS.
‘Race-based laws’
This comes while South Africa is facing serious pushback from Afrikaner rights groups such as AfriForum and Solidarity on what they describe as “race-based laws” disadvantaging minority groups. These claims have been parroted by US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who have been spreading the discredited “white genocide” narrative against SA.
Central to the report is the concept of “equitable representation”, requiring the SAPS to align its workforce at every occupational level with national race-gender demographic ratios.
This creates a rigid matrix of targets across eight race-gender categories (African male and female; coloured male and female; Indian male and female; and white male and female) and six occupational tiers: top management, senior management, mid-management, skilled technical and semiskilled.
When a category meets or exceeds its target, the “Barnard principle” applies, allowing the SAPS to legally deny appointment or promotion to even the best-qualified candidate from an “overrepresented” group.
The related “Naidoo principle” allows posts to be blocked even when the target for a group is set at zero.
Denied promotion
IRR Legal notes that since 2024, tens of thousands of black male officers, particularly at skilled, semiskilled, and senior levels, were in what the report termed “Barnard circumstances”, meaning they could legally be denied promotion solely because of their race-gender classification.
In total, nearly 63,000 SAPS employees were estimated to be in such circumstances, the majority of whom were black. Since 2024, SAPS top management was overwhelmingly black (26 positions), with one position held by a coloured male, and zero by the other five race-gender pairs.
All the eight race-gender pairs were represented at senior management (779), mid management 7,788, skilled technical 95,051, semiskilled 70,615 and unskilled 10,561. There were 184,821 permanent employees and 18 temporary staffers, taking the SAPS total workforce to 184,839 — a drop in the ocean compared with the private security industry, which employs more than 580,000 personnel.
DA MP and labour analyst Michael Bagraim said: “Racial engineering is a thing of the past; it’s what the Nazis practised. You can’t do that, especially with a police force. You want the best people in for the best performance.”
If you look at top and senior management in the police, it is predominantly black. So, I don’t know what they mean…
— Thembinkosi Mkalipi, chief director of labour relations at the department of employment & labour
Thembinkosi Mkalipi, chief director of labour relations at the department of employment & labour, said if IRR Legal claimed the Employment Equity Act was not helping black professionals with promotions, “they are not looking hard enough”.
“If you look at top and senior management in the police, it is predominantly black. So, I don’t know what they mean…. to say [the Employment Equity Act] is not helpful enough in the public sector [is not true],” Mkalipi said.
Labour expert Vic van Vuuren said there is a need to introduce a sunset clause on BEE. He emphasised the importance of conducting a proper assessment of where the country now stands.
“Many individuals, including those in the police, have taken the government to court, claiming they have been prejudiced. We need to ask: is BEE still necessary?,” he said.
“The time has come to step back and critically assess BEE. Have we done enough to catch up? … I don’t believe there is no need for BEE, but I do believe we need to evaluate whether it should be applied on an industry basis or a national basis,” Van Vuuren said.
Popcru rejects report
Richard Mamabolo, spokesperson of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), which represents 160,000 police, prison and traffic officers, said the Cosatu affiliate rejects the report. .
He said the report’s claim that black males are now the primary victims of “negative discrimination” relies on a “narrow and selective reading of numerical targets while stripping transformation of its historical and social context”.
“By focusing on hypothetical legal outcomes rather than demonstrated patterns of unfair exclusion, the report creates a misleading narrative that suggests transformation itself is unjust.
“We reject the notion of so-called ‘anti-black discrimination’ under employment equity. This framing is false and dangerous, as it seeks to undermine confidence in transformation, divide workers along race and gender lines, and delegitimise democratic gains made since 1994,” Mamabolo said.
Mamabolo said the report was aimed at “rubbishing transformation policies”.
Given the infamous role played in enforcing the policies of the. apartheid regime, the report says: “Some form of affirmative action was specifically needed in the police to ensure trust and legitimacy, which are preconditions of successful policing in an open, constitutional democracy. Given the track record placing tens of thousands of officers in Barnard circumstances over a decade, the question stands: is the SAPS effective and well trusted?”.
It says the BEE system is failing police officers of all races, though the largest group in Barnard circumstances are black males. “It is crucial to realise that even though ‘BEE’ is supposed to mean ‘black empowerment’ its practical effect at SAPS is the opposite for many officers. As Regulation 9(10) of the Employment Equity Act now covers more than 7.5-million workers a similar dynamic might well emerge at national level.”
‘Undermining morale’
The regulation effectively requires designated employers to set specific demographic targets by race and gender across occupational levels and treat those targets as binding benchmarks, not aspirational goals, among others.
The IRR Legal report states there is a significant risk that the BEE rule “is undermining morale, cohesion and service delivery by blocking the best candidates of all races from promotion”.
“BEE is not anti-white and pro-black. BEE puts people’s livelihoods at risk across all eight official race-gender pairs. If this fact were broadly known, rather than carefully ignored, South Africans would be in a far better position to bring about a legislative scheme that programmes the republic for safe growth,” it says.
Correction: January 27 2026
The report was published by IRR Legal and not the Institute of Race Relations as previously stated in this article. Business Day regrets the error.
