Tempers flared during an employment equity debate in the W Cape provincial legislature with an ANC MPL asked to leave.
|||Cape Town - Tempers flared in the Western Cape provincial legislature on Thursday in a debate on employment equity and an ANC member was asked to leave, while DA provincial leader Ivan Meyer was accused of making statements similar to those of Adolf Hitler and Hendrik Verwoerd.
Deputy Speaker Piet Pretorius instructed ANC MPL Khaya Magaxa to leave the House after he acted “against the rules of the House” and warned members “to use their words carefully”.
ANC MPL Max Ozinsky said Meyer’s statement that coloured people were being “pushed away and trampled upon” by the ANC was similar to “Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and apartheid’s Hendrik Verwoerd” in the way he was “raising coloured fears”.
“You are telling coloured people they must stand behind the DA and they will protect your interests,” he said.
MPLs were debating the latest Commission for Employment Equity report that found white men occupied 65.5 percent and white women 14 percent of top management positions in the government, business, NGOs and educational institutions in the Western Cape.
Of all provinces, the Western Cape has the most whites in top management. On average, white men hold 57.8 percent and white women 12.2 percent of top management posts across South Africa.
The ANC leader in the legislature, Lynne Brown, said on Thursday the report showed one had to be “pale and male” to find work in the province.
“The Western Cape is becoming more unfriendly to people who are not white,” she said.
“Just here in the legislature the majority of MPLs are pale and male. In (provincial) government, as black women leave, white males are there to replace them. Women are the worst off in this province.”
She said no amount of propaganda could hide the true facts of the report.
“We all want quality services but it doesn’t mean it should be white,” she said.
The DA’s Meyer, MEC for Cultural Affairs and Sport, rejected the commission’s report and said “it was an abuse by state institutions to target the well-run government of the Western Cape”.
He said the ANC wanted to punish coloured people for voting for the DA in Western Cape by not applying regional demographic statistics in implementing employment equity.
“The ANC wants to apply employment equity at all cost and at the cost of service delivery,” he said.
Meyer said the ANC should stop undermining coloured people.
“Coloured people are pushed away and trampled on by the ANC. Everyone gets trampled upon, even Trevor Manuel,” he said.
Cope MPL Mbulelo Ncedana cautioned Meyer about his statements. “Don’t pretend you speak on behalf of coloured people,” he said.
“Everywhere the DA takes power black people are not fit for purpose… they are either corrupt or incompetent,” he said.
ANC MPL Khaya Magaxa said the DA had turned back the clock on employment equity since it took over the provincial government.
He was later asked to leave the legislature for disrespecting the chair, Deputy Speaker Piet Pretorius.
Premier Helen Zille was the last to speak and also rejected the commission’s report.
She said the provincial government had better levels of employment equity under the DA than when the ANC ruled.
“In the office of the premier we have 80 percent employment equity, that is better than any other province’s premier’s offices,” she said.
Zille said out of all senior managers in the Western Cape government, 65 percent were black African, coloured or Indian.
cobus.coetzee@inl.co.za
Cape Times