New quotas a death blow

SHOCK: NUMERICAL EMPLOYMENT RULES

- William Saunderson-Meyer

Transformation is Dr Cyril's miracle cure that if ingested in sufficient quantities was supposed to eliminate all debilitating effects of apartheid. Instead, it is about to finish off the patient.

The gazetting of the department of employment and labour's numerical employment targets, which form part of the Employment Equity Amendment Act (EEAA), was long anticipated and much dreaded by many.

It turns out that they're even more draconian and destructive than was feared. The complex matrix of requirements across 18 economic sectors affecting any employer of 50 or more people has to be incrementally implemented over a punishing five-year schedule.

It effectively condemns hundreds of thousands of whites, as well as Indians and coloureds who are currently demographically "over-represented" in their employment categories, to being surplus to the requirements of a desperately skills-short economy.

The end result will be wholesale destruction of jobs, with the DA estimating that 600,000 jobs will be lost.

Foreign companies will slowly divest or at least put expansion on hold.