Twenty-thousand interns will shortly be appointed as labour inspectors to ensure that businesses are complying with employment equity legislation, Labour Minister Nomakhosazana Meth told the National Assembly on Wednesday.
She was responding to a question about the number of companies which are currently non-compliant with the laws, and acknowledged: “The private sector is found wanting”.
Meth had been asked by ANC MP Sello Maeco whether her department had collected data on the state of transformation in the financial sector.
The minister said white people still dominated the sector, with representation of 58.8% as compared with black representation at 18%. This showed, she said, the need to “expedite employment equity policies”.
Later in the sitting, the minister was asked by Freedom Front Plus MP Heloïse Denner whether her department would “do away with race-based legislation”.
Meth responded: “It will be difficult to redress the imbalances of the past merely by ignoring race… Unfortunately, my department is not intending to do away with those laws.”
Julius Malema’s children take centre stage
The labour minister was appearing before the National Assembly as one of the ministers from the economic cluster tasked with answering MPs’ questions.
With Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana out of action, apparently due to ill health, his department was represented by his deputies, David Masondo (ANC) and Ashor Sarupen (DA).
Sarupen became embroiled in a verbal bunfight with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) after failing to answer a question about scholar transport and nutrition to the Fighters’ satisfaction.
Questioned by EFF MP Veronica Mente about whether the National Treasury set standard rates for transporting and feeding schoolchildren, Sarupen responded that this did not fall within the responsibilities of the department — and was then accused by Mente of being out of touch with the realities of feeding schemes and scholar transport issues due to having his children in a private school.
Sarupen clarified that he did not have children — but added: “I am aware that [EFF leader] Honourable [Julius] Malema has his kids in a private school and I’m sure they’re privately transported as well.”
This prompted a furious outburst from Malema on the virtual platform, who accused Sarupen of “being a coward and fighting children”.
Said Malema: “I went to a public school; I come from a family which has got nothing. I’m not like him from a privileged family.”
The EFF leader also delivered a thinly veiled threat of violence, saying: “I can attend to you ideologically, theoretically, physically and otherwise, including outside… I am not responsible for your father giving birth to a brainless stupid minister.”
Sarupen backed down, saying: “If I have in any way offended any member of the EFF, I withdraw.”
State Capture-accused MK MP Lucky Montana subsequently offered to give Sarupen a lecture on the joys of fatherhood — a gesture rejected by the House chair, Werner Horn.
Concerns raised about Ithala Bank
Among the topics in focus on Wednesday afternoon was Ithala Bank: the KwaZulu-Natal financial institution founded by Mangosuthu Buthelezi which recently had its licence suspended for failing to meet the Financial Sector Conduct Authority’s financial soundness regulations.
Masondo told MPs that while Ithala had no banking licence, another bank would stand in for it, with three banks in negotiations over this.
“We are dealing with the problem together with Treasury officials,” said Masondo.
When asked by ActionSA whether either the Treasury or the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government planned to inject capital into Ithala to prevent a repeat of the VBS Mutual Bank collapse, Masondo replied: “At this stage, there is no plan to recapitalise.”
ActionSA released a statement after the National Assembly sitting expressing concern that the “worrying confirmation that [recapitalisation] is not going to happen now places the bank’s continued operation at serious risk”.
Should whites be penalised for not opening their doors to census counters?
One of the more unusual contributions to Wednesday’s Q&A came from State Capture-accused MK MP Siyabonga Gama, in reference to the ongoing controversy over the utility of the latest census results.
Gama, addressing Deputy Minister in the Presidency Kenneth Morolong, pointed out that the highest undercount in the country was in Cape Town — which he claimed was because white Capetonians were not willing to open their doors to black and coloured census enumerators.
Gama asked whether Morolong would consider, in such cases, invoking a clause of the Statistics Act making it an offence to obstruct the work of the census.
Morolong responded that it was hoped that current amendments to the Act under consideration would “give it more teeth”. DM