Affirmative action ‘illegal’

This week the Cape Town Labour Court granted an interdict against the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) saying the DCS may not fill a vacant position because they are discriminating against a candidate for the job on the grounds of race. The interdict was granted to prevent the DCS filling a position for which trade union Solidarity member, Christo February, had applied before the principal case which Solidarity is conducting on behalf of DCS employees in the Cape Town Labour Court has been heard. The court said Solidarity had succeeded in establishing a case for unfair discrimination. The judge said DCS discriminated against February on the grounds of his race. It seems the DCS is hell bent on achieving absolute quotas at all costs and that the Employment Equity Act did not permit this. Solidarity Deputy General Secretary Dirk Hermann said this was the first step to justice. Solidarity will now refer five more cases against the DCS’s racial plan to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. That will bring the total number of affirmative action cases against the South African government to 31. The cases against the DCS aim to fight department’s grand affirmative action plan, which is intended to bring all post of all jobs at all levels in the department in line with national racial demographics regardless of the profile of the province or region. IOL reported national racial demographics in the Westerns Cape of coloured employees are about 51% while the national profile is some 8,8% of the total. This means that, through affirmative action programmes, coloured persons have to be reduced from 51% in the Western Cape to approximately 8,8%, resulting in very few, if any, opportunities for promotion for coloured people in the Western Cape. Herman said this is “social engineering” which will lead to relocation to enjoy the rights people are entitled to.