Michael Bagrime | April 7, 2025
During the Congressional Questioning Session, I asked Employment and Labor Minister Nomahosazana Mess about the training and development of the 10,000 inspectors who were just employed, and why they were hired to target employment equity fraud.
Instead of answering the question directly, the Minister accused me of being anti-conversion and attempting to undermine SA's Employment Equity Act and regulations. We argue that our equity laws are not transformative. Since the implementation and emergence of employment equity, our employment numbers have deteriorated from worsening to worsening.
The reality needs to sink in that SA has an unemployment rate of over 40%. You can't make it a business as usual. Employment equity sacrifices billions of rands of SA each year, along with the desperate efforts of employers to find ways to not create more jobs.
Every business has reasons not to hire, but the common thread is deep distrust when the government tells who to hire. Many of these are black-owned businesses, and the reason is no different from employers of colored Indian and white racial groups.
In 2025, it is dishonorable that we still have so many race-based laws in our statute books. While most people agree that past misconduct needs to be corrected, employment equity laws have shown they have failed.
The only way to correct past mistakes is to train and mentor many of the people that were previously as blessed as possible. The way to do this is through employer incentives. Employer incentives can take the form of tax-exempt or many other beneficial arrangements.
Just one example of the cost of this monitoring is the training and employment of an additional 10,000 inspectors by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
“Disclaimer – the views and opinions expressed in this article are the views of the author and are not necessarily those of the Bee Room.”
