Cosatu: Private sector ignoring transformation

The recent report of the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) is a “shocking indictment” of the private business sector, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Monday.

“Cosatu is disgusted at the [2008/09 report’s] findings, which showed that white men still occupy 61% of all top management positions,” the trade union federation said in a statement.

While the government was making good progress towards meeting employment equity targets that matched South Africa’s demographics, there had been virtually no progress in the private sector.

“White people hold 74% of the top [private sector] positions, followed by black people with 13%, Indians with just less than 6%, coloureds with 5% and foreigners accounting for about 3%

“This is a shocking indictment of the private sector, which has done virtually nothing to transform the demographic structure inherited from apartheid.”

Cosatu said the report demolished the argument that black economic empowerment (BEE) was redundant because South Africans now lived in an equitable, non-racial society, and that BEE and affirmative action were anti-white.

“On the contrary, we still live in a society in which wealth and power remain heavily biased in favour of the white minority.

“The federation agrees with CEE chairperson Jimmy Manyi that the government’s approach of persuasion was not having the desired effect, that black and coloured people were bearing the brunt of it, and that the present law ‘is very forgiving’.

“We welcome his statement that ‘the department and the commission are going to take a much less conciliatory view’, that ‘those who are not playing ball we will name and shame’ and that there are going to be a lot more prosecutions,” it said.—Sapa