THERE is good reason to believe that Jimmy Manyi, among other things chairperson of the Equal Opportunities Commission and general watchdog on affirmative action and black economic empowerment, will need to be nimble when he announces the commission's annual report on Monday.
The report, which has been published for the past nine years, is not an annual report in the true sense of the word - it's a summary and fairly simple analysis of the information submitted by employers to the department of labour over the preceding year, in which they give account of the racial profile of their workforce, as well as the affirmative-action programmes within their companies.
Every year this is front-page news, because Manyi believes in playing the race card whenever and wherever he gets the opportunity.
He does it convincingly and superlatively, and even masterfully if one considers the inferior quality of the data his commission's report contains.
For a white individual it always a depressing experience to listen to Manyi's findings on affirmative action.
This is because progress has been exceptionally slow, and Manyi ascribes this without exception to racist employers refusing to face squarely up to the country's realities and trying to hedge their privileged positions, believing that persons of colour came into the world forever to be the modern equivalents of woodcutters and water bearers.
For people of colour Manyi wonderfully expresses their frustrations, and they probably consider him the only leader who really understands why the country is making no progress in the struggle against poverty and inequality.
'What skills shortage?'
He is militantly radical in his utterances, as when two years ago he startled the country by declaring that there was absolutely no shortage of skills - this was simply a fanciful excuse by crafty employers to avoid promoting their darker compatriots.
But, unlike ANC Youth League leaders such as Julius Malema, who has actually become a source of comic entertainment, Manyi is regarded as a highly intelligent and enlightened analyst who expunges the hypocrisy and window-dressing of white racism like a surgeon excises an abscess.
For people who do not wish to define themselves in terms of skin colour, these outbursts are becoming increasingly irrelevant - and even monotonous.
Manyi always focuses on the higher positions in the workforce since promotion via affirmative action is particularly slow, especially at the higher levels like top management, senior management and professional groups.
The top-level situation improved 3.9% last year, with 18.8% of those positions occupied by blacks, and at senior management level the percentage also rose 3.9% to 18.1%. But in professional posts and at middle-management level coloured representation however declined.
Every time this report is published, Manyi and Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana threaten to prosecute employers failing to comply with the Equal Opportunities Act because of slow progress in terms of affirmative action.
The truth is that in nine years to date the department has successfully prosecuted only two companies for violating the act. These were both Chinese clothing manufacturers in northern Kwazulu-Natal who had failed to submit any affirmative-action reports. Both were fined a couple of thousand rand.
In 2006 the department's inspectors sent reminders to 13 listed companies because they had not submitted their annual progress reports - a breach for which an employer can be fined R900 000. The names were published in the media, but it eventually transpired that in all 13 cases there were reasons for not complying such as companies changing their names and submitting reports under new names. There was therefore no prosecution of any of the 13.
Egg on their faces - again
Two years ago the department of labour summoned Comair-Kulula to the Labour Court to submit further particulars of the company's affirmative action plans and provide explanations on its slow progress, especially for pilot positions. The end result, again, was egg on the face of the department.
It is clear that Manyi and Mdladlana are playing politics to an audience, rather than giving serious attention to affirmative action's real issues and obstacles.
Last year they were again red-faced when the University of the Witwatersrand's Swop research unit - which had been commissioned two or three years ago to investigate the application of the Equal Opportunities Act - noted in its report that the data in Manyi's annual report did not suffice for any conclusions to be drawn concerning the labour market.
At the same time, Swop declared that employers receive little or no help from the department. This is mainly because too few companies submit reports to the department. Poor administration of the report register results in each year's survey group differing entirely from that of the previous year.
Like any politician, Manyi will certainly find a way to skirt the problem, but he cannot avoid the end result: affirmative action has stagnated for the ninth successive year, and neither threats nor prosecution have changed anything.
Affirmative action and the Equal Opportunities Act will remain with us for years, even decades. Can we make something more of it than political rhetoric and symbolism? Can't it please be transformed into something giving real impetus to both the upliftment of the disadvantaged and social transformation?
- Fin24.com