The Democratic Alliance will not be abandoning its court challenge against the Employment Equity Amendment Act. The party said on Monday it was ready to argue its case in the North Gauteng High Court on Tuesday morning to show how the transformative law undermines South Africa’s investment prospects.
“The DA is ready to begin argument tomorrow in our seminal court action to ensure fair access to jobs and employment for all South Africans.
Our court action, which was launched more than 2 years ago, during the 6th Parliament, argues that the Employment Equity Amendment Act discriminates unfairly and unconstitutionally,” said DA Federal Executive Chairperson Helen Zille.
The DA also argued the act gives way too much power to the labour minister, authority it believes could be used in a punitive manner against employers who may not be able to achieve employment equity targets who may ultimately be forced out of business.
“It is grossly unfair and gives totalitarian powers of social engineering to the Minister of Labour, who will 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.
“This can no longer be classified as a target. It amounts to an enabling law for the Minister to set rigid quotas, which have previously been found by our courts to be unconstitutional,” Zille said.
Challenged about the creation of a black middle class, estimated at more than 10 million people through the ANC sponsored Black Economic Empowerment and employment equity amongst others, Zille was dismissive arguing the redress policies only benefited individuals with ties to the former liberation movement.
“There’s no difference between that and state capture, in fact if you followed the Zondo Commission you would know that those enabled state capture because it’s those same laws that allowed preferential procurement that benefited ANC cadres and therefore aided the party’s hold on the state,” she said without providing any proof of her claims.
The series of court challenges mounted by the DA against the very government it is part of has antagonised some of the parties in the GNU but the DA underplayed that indicating its actions were meant at benefiting its current as well as future voters and no one else.