Statement by Michael Bagraim MP – DA Spokesperson on Employment & Labour:
The Democratic Alliance is appalled by the revelation that the Department of Employment and Labour has told employers to make use of the long-scrapped 1950 Population Registration Act when classifying staff by race.
This instruction is as shocking as it is unlawful, and the DA is already examining every legal avenue available to put an immediate stop to it.
South Africans know exactly what the Population Registration Act represented. It was the law that separated families, dictated where people could live, and laid the foundation for every other piece of apartheid discrimination.
To drag that law back into public life, three decades after its repeal, is nothing short of an assault on the dignity and equality of every person in this country.
Instead of accepting responsibility for its own unconstitutional quotas, the government now wants businesses to take on the role once played by apartheid officials: determining the “race” of employees using outdated and deeply offensive categories.
It is an extraordinary admission that the state has no lawful method to enforce its racial targets and is willing to shift both the burden and the risk onto private employers.
The DA has warned again and again that the Employment Equity Amendment Act cannot function without coercive racial classification.
The latest letter from the Department proves that the government intends to force employers into impossible positions, either comply with rigid quotas that ignore the realities of individual firms, or face crippling fines of up to 10% of turnover.
This is not redress. It is ideological engineering at the expense of jobs, investment and growth. South Africa will not be lifted out of inequality by reviving apartheid’s logic.
The DA’s existing legal challenges against these quotas continue, and today’s development will be added to our case. We are also considering further action in light of the Department’s shocking instruction.
South Africans fought hard for a non-racial democracy. We will not allow the Department of Labour to smuggle apartheid thinking back into our law under any guise. The DA will resist this every step of the way.