OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday 1.00pm.
THE National Council of Provinces has passed the controversial Employment Equity Bill. The legislation was followed, on Tuesday, by a veiled threat from the Freedom Front that the affirmative action measures could spark violence.
The bill, which requires companies to draw up and implement employment equity plans, was passed by the National Assembly last month, and will now have to be signed into law by President Nelson Mandela.
During debate on the bill, FF NCOP member Ben van der Walt said Sri Lanka was a good example of where an affirmative action policy had gone wrong because it had not been reached with the consensus of all ethnic groups. This had prompted Tamils to take up arms and call for an independent state.
“Will this happen in South Africa? Only the future will tell,” Van der Walt said. He criticised Business South Africa and its affiliates, the South African Agricultural Union and the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, for having “sold out” white males.
Labour Minister Shepherd Mdladlana said those who opposed the measures wanted to entrench their apartheid privileges, and that their intention was “to condemn blacks, women and the disabled to the margins of society”.
The bill was passed by 35 votes to 12, with the support of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The Democratic and National parties voted against it.