EEB–IRR petition

Petition President Ramaphosa to veto the national racial quotas when the Employment Equity Bill hits his desk.

• • Several new racial laws are being delivered to the President’s desk that could do incalculable damage if signed into force. One of those laws is the Employment Equity Amendment Bill (EEB).
  • Under the EEB, new race quotas will apply across the private sector and will be enforceable by penalties up to R2,9 million or 10% of business turnover.
  • The EEB will also disqualify businesses that miss quotas, from even trying to bid for government contracts

Click the button below to sign the petition

However well-intentioned BEE may have been at its initiation the path to hellacious corruption and economic underperformance has been laid by this country’s existing race-laws. The new “Employment Equity” Bill (EEB) would fulfil the ANC’s promise to make BEE “more aggressive”, pushing things from bad to worse.

If the EEB becomes law, and it has already been approved by the National Assembly, it will allow the Minister of Employment and Labour to “set numerical targets for any national economic sector”, including “targets for different occupational levels, sub-sectors or regions within a sector” in order to achieve “equitable representation” at “all occupational levels in the workforce”. The scope and ambition of the new race quotas can hardly be exaggerated.

To enforce the proposed race-based social engineering businesses will be required to promise, in writing, that they aim to meet the Minister’s “numerical targets” and provide plans to labour inspectors of how this will be achieved. Failure to comply will result in the inspectors denying a “compliance certificate”, which will, in turn, prevent the business from trying to bid for any government contract.

That might sound like it only effects the minority of businesses that would like to bid for government tenders, but this provision will harm all South Africans by accelerating State Capture 2.0.

please note that you will be taken to the IRR’s website

State Capture 2.0
The Zondo Commission’s State Capture Report observed that under the current race-based laws when the government spends taxes there is “undoubtedly” an “inevitable tension” between the principle of seeking the best value-for-money and the notion of race-based preference. The Zondo report shows in detail how race-laws were used as a mopane leaf to both hide and feed the worm of corruption.

“Ultimately” the Zondo report concluded “in the view of the Commission the primary national interest is best served when the government derives the maximum value-for-money in the procurement process”. The IRR agrees, having long promoted this assessment.

But the EEB would do the opposite of what would best serve “the primary national interest”. The EEB would take the current system, which at least insists that all companies are allowed to bid which creates some record of what the genuine market price of a tender is and which theoretically limits the BEE “premium” to 20% extra cost, and blows this up exquisitely by blocking companies from entering the tender process from the beginning and allowing a limitless race premium over value-for-money.

Million Rand Fines
Secondly, if the EEB becomes law then employers that refuse to assume the take of racially classifying their employees (or which carry it out incorrectly) face fines of up to R1.5m, or 2% of annual turnover, whichever is the greater, for a first ‘offence’ of this kind. Penalties for repeat offences of this type may rise as high as R2.7m or 10% of annual turnover, again whichever is the greater.

Fines of that size will bankrupt most businesses. Every business bankrupted by the government’s social engineering has a multiplier effect, knocking other businesses in the supply-chain down a peg and reducing employment, thereby reducing aggregate demand and increasing the tax burden on social care.

But the EEB is immoral even before you look at the consequences, it is immoral on its face. To judge people as more deserving of government support or more deserving of government punishment by force, in the context South Africa finds itself in today, on the basis of race is flatly inconsistent with the basic moral tenet that each person should be judged by their deeds not their bloodlines.

This moral tenet is not merely a private opinion, it is enshrined in the Constitution of South Africa and the fundamentals of the Rule of Law. If the President of the Republic fails to respect your call to stop the new nationwide race quotas the Constitutional Court will be presented with the irresistible arguments distilled in this petition as to save South Africa from the EEB. Add your voice to the call to let South Africans work together on the basis that we are people not just pigments.