The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday expressed its readiness for Tuesday’s court action, in which it will argue for fair access to jobs and employment for all South Africans.

The party has launched a constitutional challenge, arguing that the Employment Equity Amendment Act discriminates “unfairly and unconstitutionally”.

DA Federal Council chairperson Helen Zille pointed out that while the Constitution allowed fair discrimination to achieve redress, it must meet the fairness benchmark set out in Section 9.

Zille described the Amendment Act as draconian and said it fell far short of the required constitutional benchmark.

She said it was “grossly unfair and gave totalitarian powers of social engineering” to Minister of Employment and Labour Nomakhosazana Meth, who she said would be able to set rigid national targets for every economic sector, without any regard to the context of specific firms, and impose extremely heavy fines and the risk of criminal conviction for failure to meet them.

Zille said this could no longer be classified as a target, arguing that this amounted to an enabling law for the Minister to set rigid quotas, which she said had previously been found by the courts to be unconstitutional.

She noted that her party supported a redress system that encouraged economic growth, created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and significantly improved the education and training system.

She pointed out that jobs were created by companies that invested in South Africa, noting that the “draconian labour regime created by the Employment Equity Amendment Act will continue to drive away investment and predictably increase unemployment”.

“Companies and potential investors have repeatedly cited these social engineering laws as major barriers to investment and growth. It is completely senseless to knowingly intensify a discriminatory regime that has already failed so spectacularly to empower economically marginalised people. This is what the evidence demonstrates. And that is why we will continue to oppose policies keeping millions of people in poverty,” she explained.

Zille argued that should this law be enacted, people belonging to a specific group concentrated in a geographical area, could face exclusion from employment based on national quotas set by the Minister. 

Zille said the DA was committed to redress for the millions of South Africans who remained economically excluded owing to the legacy of apartheid.

“We believe the most effective form of redress is a job. The African National Congress’s Employment Equity regime continues the bitter legacy of the past because it is one of the key factors driving our country’s skyrocketing unemployment rate,” she said.

She pointed out that government policy could either encourage real empowerment, or continue to benefit an already empowered elite, increasingly competing over a shrinking number of jobs.

“We have already learnt where that leads, and we cannot allow ourselves to repeat the same mistakes over and over again,” she said.

She said racial quotas were dehumanising and unjust, because they reduced people to statistics, ignoring talent and effort.

The DA said it also has a technical challenge to the Employment Amendment Act, which is that it was incorrectly tagged under Section 75 of the Constitution.

“This Act will profoundly affect different provinces and therefore should have been tagged under Section 76 of the Constitution,” explained Zille.

SABOTAGE OF TRANSFORMATION GOALS

Meanwhile, Meth said the DA's court challenge is an attempt to "reverse the progress" made since 1994 and "maintain the unfair status quo".

She said the Amendment Act empowers the Minister of Employment and Labour to set numerical targets for equitable representation of suitably qualified individuals from designated groups at all occupational levels, noting that this is done after consulting relevant sectors and with the advice of the Commission, ensuring that the Minister does not act arbitrarily and remains within the framework of the Employment Equity Act.

She explained that unlike rigid mandatory quotas, which must be achieved at all costs, the Amendment Act introduces flexible employment equity targets. 

"The DA's challenge seeks to disrupt efforts aimed at achieving equitable representation and maintaining the inherently unfair status quo. By opposing these amendments, the DA is actively sabotaging the transformation goals that have been pursued since the end of the apartheid era, effectively hindering progress towards equality and fairness in the workplace. This stance is not only anti-transformation, but also a step backward in the fight for equality and fairness in the workplace," argued Meth.