Oh, you didn’t know that cabinet has already approved this little racial nugget? Well, basically it’s just waiting for a few more signatures now before it forces change upon us. According to the SA Institute of Race Relations, who kindly did crunch the numbers for everyone, a lot of job loss and not much job creation is in order.

The institute notes that an employer with 1000 workers in a factory in the Western Cape who had succeeded in fulfilling regional demographics would have a workforce that was 29.1 percent African, 54.8 percent coloured, 0.5 percent Indian and 15.6 percent white.

The tangible numbers of his workforce would therefore consist of 291 Africans, 548 coloured people, five Indians, and 156 whites.

But, because the bill demands a shift from regional to national demographics, his workforce will have to become 73.7 percent African, 10.9 percent coloured, 3.2 percent Indian and 12.2 percent white.

Head of special research at the institute, Anthea Jeffery, said employers seeking to meet the new targets of Manyi’s bill had four options:

Option one – the employer can keep his workforce at 1000 people. However, to attain the right racial proportions, he would have to reduce his coloured staff from 548 to 109 and his white staff from 156 to 122, while increasing his African employees from 291 to 737 and his Indian workers from five to 32.

Basically he would need to fire 439 coloured people and 34 whiteys.

His second option would be to reduce his overall workforce by 60 percent so that his existing 291 African employees made up 73.7 percent of his reduced workforce of 395 people.

He would then retain all his 291 African employees, but would have to bring down his coloured employees to 43 and his white staff to 48. His Indian employees would need to go up to 13. He would then have to lay off 505 coloured and 108 white employees.

Third option, should he not want to retrench any of his coloured staff, would be to increase the staff complement to 5032 thereby satisfying the 10.9 percent coloured demographic. Don’t forget he’d now also need 3709 Africans, 161 Indians, and 614 whites.

The fourth option is to just ignore the new racial targets, like Manyi is doing with Trev’s letter, and risk it. The bill has also removed “key defences” based on skills shortages and financial constraints so this probably isn’t your best bet.

No wonder Trev got so hectique. This is clearly not the way to win the Western Cape vote, eksê.

[Source: IOL]