Cape Town - DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko and two DA MPs affected by the caucus reshuffle on Sunday moved to limit the political fallout after party leader Helen Zille’s public apology for MPs having “dropped the ball” by supporting an employment equity bill.
The DA will vote against the Employment Equity Amendment Bill in the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday, in contrast to its MPs in the National Assembly last month.
Tweaking current regulation of demographics in the work place, the bill stands in contrast to the DA’s opportunity society values and policies.
Mazibuko told the Cape Argus the views set out in Zille’s SA Today “reflected the collective view of the parliamentary caucus on this matter” and the reshuffle was the “consequence” of events leading to the DA leader’s public newsletter on Thursday.
However, she remained silent when asked whether this turn of events was a negative reflection on her leadership at Parliament, which had been questioned before.
Instead Mazibuko said she had initiated “a process of reviewing and improving the management systems that we use to process Bills in Parliament”.
Former DA labour spokesman Sej Motau, the DA pointman on the employment equity draft law, said he did not see his move to economic development as a demotion.
DA MP Greg Krumbock, the former economic development spokesman and now deputy in the transport portfolio, said he had asked to be moved to free up time for election preparations. “It works for me and it works for the party,” he said.
Friday’s reshuffle saw DA deputy labour spokesman Andricus van der Westhuizen move as deputy to economic development, while former DA MP on appropriations Kenneth Mubu became labour spokesman with Haniff Hoosen, formerly of economic development, as his deputy.
It is the second time in two months that the DA seemed to sing out of tune on racially-based legislation.
In September, DA Gauteng premier candidate Mmusi Maimane said the party supported broad-based black economic empowerment, while DA federal chairman Wilmot James said in a radio interview the party would drop racially-defined empowerment in favour of “diversity economic empowerment”.
The Sunday Times reported Zille wrote a “furious” email to the DA parliamentary caucus, berating it for supporting the Employment Equity Amendment Bill.
This email followed an earlier one to the parliamentary management team last week.
Her public statement on what she called “the depth of confusion regarding the DA’s position on affirmative action” is regarded by some as a highly unusual move, coming a few hours after what has been described as a tough caucus meeting on Thursday.
The DA on the labour committee was “inadequately prepared” and submitted a “defective” explanatory memorandum on the bill to caucus, she wrote in SA Today, adding MPs could not adequately debate the bill due to a long parliamentary recess.
Outlining her party’s position, Zille said the DA supported the need to redress the legacy of apartheid, but this had to be done through jobs, education and training, economic growth and alignment and incentivising business to create opportunities, not “crony-based BEE” which “over-empowered a small, politically-connected elite”.
The Employment Equity Amendment Bill removes foreign nationals qualifying as beneficiaries, while extending the application to labour broker employees.
Cape Argus