The City of Johannesburg has been left red-faced after receiving backlash for several job adverts looking for white and Indian people to fill the position of personal assistant in the speaker’s office.
Advertised in February, the adverts specifically called on Indian, white males and females to apply for seven vacancies across development and planning department and the legislature. The positions varied and they included aides for council speaker Vasco da Gama at R500,000 per annum.
In its defence, the city said it had eliminated other races in the adverts to not waste time of unfitting applicants.
The adverts read: “This is an employment equity targeted position and preference will be given to Indian/White males and Indian/White females including people with disabilities”. This has resulted in social media backlash for the city.
Da Gama’s acting spokesperson Virgil James said the rationale behind the race requirements was determined in terms of filling vacancies as per the organisational development structure.
“The employment equity makes this determination of where the imbalance is and attempts to rectify this in this way,” he said.
Asked to give figures of the city’s employment equity statistics, James said those questions should be referred to the city’s employment equity team.
“Any advert has the preference of the required race group as determined by employment equity. This is not, I must emphasise, a personal preference of any official. This is the policy that is used and as much as it may be upsetting to job seekers, it also helps to avoid applicants wasting their time.
“In this instance, councillor Da Gama is not in any way involved in the selection or advertising except human resources whose function it is to attend to such matters coupled to employment equity determination,” James said.
By 4pm, after questions had been sent to Da Gama and Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse, the city doubled down on its initial stance and the job adverts were edited.
It read: “This is an employment equity targeted position and preference will be given to the EE underrepresented groups.”
Though the posts may have been edited, applications closed March 1.
The DA-led coalition has come under severe fire in recent weeks, being accused of purging young black professionals, after council adopted to rescind the conversion of fixed-term contracts workers who contracts were converted in October last year and the staff made permanent.
This means, by May 1, at least 130 employees will be jobless and the majority of them are black.
The multiparty coalition, supported by Joburg acting city manager Mesuli Mlandu, said the conversion was “irregular”.
Asked questions around the rationale behind racial preference stipulated in the adverts, Phalatse’s spokesperson Mabine Seabe said the city was investigating the matter.
“We're still investigating the particulars around this. We will then brief the media on the details,” Seabe said.
Minority opposition bloc chairperson in the municipality and AIC councillor Margaret Arnolds said the advert was a clear indication the DA was getting rid of black professionals in the city.
“This is wrong.”
“It’s very clear the DA still operates with the mindset of apartheid. Africans don’t matter to them. This clearly shows the DA is inclined to side with whiteness over black employees,” Arnolds said.
ANC caucus leader Mpho Moerane accused the DA of having taken a stance to “get rid of all black professionals”.
Moerane said this was evident with the 130 employees who were now jobless.
“What they failed to do was discipline the human resources department because if council had taken an irregular decision in the conversion process, then human resources as well as legal should have advised councillors.
“The DA is anti-black as this has never happened in the city before. Under the ANC government, we never excluded anyone based on race,” Moerane said.
Economist Duma Gqubule said the City of Joburg has “a twisted understanding of what employment equity means.”
“In some sectors of economy there would be more black people but across the whole economy there’s a huge representation of Indian and white people. If you look at it to the national picture, whites are way much more represented in terms of the demographic picture, the same applies for Indian people,” Gqubule said.
Labour lawyer Osborne Molatudi from Molatudi Attorneys said employers are empowered to develop and implement an employment equity plan in terms of the Employment Equity Act which aims to eliminate discrimination in the workplace and to achieve equitable representation of employees from designated groups by means of affirmative action.
“Nothing stops any aggrieved employee from lodging a grievance with that employer, which may be followed by a dispute referral to an appropriate forum such as the CCMA, Bargaining Council or the labour court,” Molatudi said.
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