bias
Ann Eveleth
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal undertook this week to launch an inquiry into allegations that building consortium Group Five refused to consider highly qualified candidates for senior posts because they were black or female.
Executive recruitment firm Dick Muller CC blew the whistle on the construction, engineering and works giant. “They hired me to recruit for two positions in Natal and one in Cape Town. I told them I had several highly qualified candidates, including several solid black and female applicants, but they told me, ‘Sorry, no blacks, no women,'” said Muller.
He is now fighting for payment Group Five denies it owes him, since the positions were never filled.
Muller said the company’s attitude took him by surprise: “I was quite pleased to be able to offer them highly qualified black and women candidates, knowing that many firms are looking for good people to help them implement affirmative action.
“When I called [Group Five building division human resources director Johan] Gouws … he told me: ‘It’s my fucking prerogative to do that.'”
Gouws told the Mail & Guardian racial and gender job reservation is not Group Five policy, but could not immediately deny he had applied it to the positions in question. He called the issue “an internal matter that is being dealt with internally”. The group’s human relations director, Piet du Preez, declined to comment on “an internal business matter”.
Group Five is the recipient of several government contracts, including two rural water-supply contracts worth half a billion rands, and has won many of its tenders on the basis of support for affirmative action and black economic empowerment.
Asmal said the group’s contracts with his department stipulate a 12% to 14% reservation for previously disadvantaged groups. “I will call for an inquiry on whether they have performed on the contract,” he said.
Du Preez said Group Five supports “the empowerment of black business and evolving a profile in keeping with the new South Africa”, but he admitted the majority of the company’s black employees are found in the lower-skilled, semi-skilled and administrative sections.
“At executive level … only 9% of employees at this level come from previously disadvantaged groups,” he said. Only one out of more than 50 directors of the company and its subsidiaries is black. Du Preez blamed these difficulties on “the current skills shortage, coupled with historically poor levels of education in science and engineering disciplines”.
But Muller said his mandate was to recruit two human resources managers and a quantity surveyor/commercial manager, not engineers.
“I found one potential candidate with a law degree, a masters diploma in labour law, a solid job record with 15 years’ experience in human relations management, but I couldn’t consider him.”
Muller said he convinced Gouws to set up an interview for a female candidate, but “nobody bothered to pitch up”. The woman was eventually interviewed, but spent half the time filling out forms. “They already had my CV and at my level you don’t expect to fill out forms during an interview. We generally talk to each other,” she said.
Du Preez pointed out that Group Five supports black education and training, and has been involved in several joint ventures with black partners.
Asked whether such joint-venture partners might fulfil Group Five’s contracts with the water affairs department, Asmal said: “Our contract is with Group Five. I don’t care a tittle about sub-contractors.
“If [Muller’s] allegations are true, I want a repudiation from all the companies involved. We can’t allow this kind of racial buffoonery to continue.”