Businesses must do serious introspection on racial transformation – Ramaphosa
JOHANNESBURG – Advancing black and female employees must be a cornerstone of any company’s operations, and this must move beyond merely ensuring compliance with laws, towards succession planning, mentoring, training and skills transfer, and giving workers a stake in the firms they work for, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.
In a weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa bemoaned the fact that more than 25 years since the end of apartheid rule, the upper echelons of management in private companies were still dominated by white men, although they made up just five percent of the economically active population.
Africans only made up 15 percent of top management despite accounting for 79 percent of the economically active population, he noted.
He said since coming to power in 1994, his African National Congress had actively sought to drive transformation through affirmative action and broad-based black economic empowerment policies.
“The significant progress that has been made in the public sector has not been matched by the private sector,” the president said, pointing to report by the Commission for Employment Equity in August which showed, at best, poor adherence to employment equity legislation, and, at worst, outright disregard for the law.
Source: iol.co.za