Correctly applied, affirmative action is not about discriminating against white people, said public service commissioner JD Squire Mahlangu on Thursday.
He was speaking at a Cape Town conference on human-resource (HR) management in the public sector. The conference, the first of its kind, has drawn about 250 delegates from all over the world.
The conference, the first of its kind, is co-hosted by the Public Service Commission and has drawn about 250 delegates from all over the world.
”You must remember when we talk affirmative action we are not discriminating against the white person,” Mahlangu said in an address on the challenges of implementing affirmative action in the public sector.
The state of the sector after apartheid was such that ”at the top you had white Afrikaner males only. You had few changes there, but at the bottom you had black cleaners. You have to change that,” said Mahlangu.
He said that when it came to affirmative action he harboured no hatred for any whites.
”I love white people. I am simply saying you have to address these imbalances, but we have to address them everywhere.”
He suggested the public sector must employ white people, particularly in positions previously seen as the domain of black people.
”Nursing is not a job meant [only] for African women — there are white young women who want to be nurses too. Train them and send them where they should be going.”
Mahlangu said the public sector needed to focus on employing more people with disabilities.
The 1998 White Paper on the transformation of the public service set targets for affirmative action, which had not been met in the case of people with disabilities, he said.
By 2005, only 0,5% of public-sector employees were people with disabilities instead of the target of 2%.
”When we talk about employing people with disabilities, those of us who are in HR must walk the extra mile.”
”If you have to go and see [organisations representing disabled people] on the weekend, go and do that, but identify jobs that can be carried out by people living with disabilities and make sure that you employ these people,” said Mahlangu.
Speaking earlier at the conference, Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said public servants need to be wary of hiding behind ”so-called best practice” and management principles.
These were often the safe havens for the unimaginative, she told conference delegates.
Fraser-Moleketi said what was needed was to build leadership and produce thinkers at every level of the chain.
These should be people who ”dare to be different, to look at problems with new eyes, to recognise problems where others see the situation as immutable”.
She said President Thabo Mbeki recently wrote to South African Cabinet ministers, directors general and heads of department, urging them to identify areas in which they had done well, and over the next two years to do even better.
”I believe that this is a call not just for South Africa, but should apply to public administration globally,” she said.
South Africa’s public service needed to make the best use of staff and ensure continuous improvement in performance. This could be achieved only if detailed attention was given to HR management.
”We also need to give attention to the challenges with regard to job-hopping, especially within the public service,” she said.
There was a general sense that South Africa could do better in terms of public-service remuneration.
However, academics had voiced a concern that the lucrative conditions of service in the public sector were luring talent out of institutions of higher learning. — Sapa