Month: July 2023

Department of Employment and Labour’s Deputy Director: Employment Equity, Niresh Singh, has told an Employment Equity workshop that South Africa’s laws are about inclusivity.

Singh was addressing one of the Department’s, together with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration’s (CCMA) EE workshops, at Horseshoe Inn in Kimberley, on Wednesday.

The Department and CCMA 2023 Employment Equity national workshops are held under the theme: “Real transformation makes business sense”.

“It is not true that the Department wants to exclude Whites, Indians or Coloureds. Our laws are about including all the people,” Singh said.

In presenting the 2023 EE Report, Singh highlighted the distortion revealed by the statistics where Whites with a national economically active population(EAP) of eight percent occupy 62.9 percent of top management whereas Africans with a national EAP of 80 percent only occupy 16.9 percent of top management.

Singh told the gathering that the department does not in any way condone overrepresentation of any group.

“What we are saying is ‘take the EAP into consideration’. We do not want to exclude anyone,” he said.

He told the meeting that the distortion has been there since 1998 when the Employment Equity Act was enacted, resulting in no change or the change being negligible. Singh said this necessitated a change in dealing with equity in the workplace, hence the Sector Targets coming into the equation.

Singh stressed the differences between the Quotas and Sector targets. He said quotas are inflexible whereas targets are flexible.

“With targets, the designated employers still maintain power to consult employees and self-regulate their annual EE targets toward achieving the 5-year sector EE target which is now regulated by the Minister. Where employers fail to achieve their own annual EE targets – the law permits them to raise a justifiable ground or reason for non-compliance and a certificate of compliance will be issued to the employer – section 53(6) of EE Amendment Act,” he said.

Meanwhile, CCMA Commissioner Lucky Moloi dealt with case law on employment equity related matters. He took the workshop through several cases stressing several mistakes and errors employers and employees do which lead to losing cases.

In a quest to move away from the laborious manual reporting, the Department’s Acting Deputy Director, Innocent Makwarela, took the workshop through the EE Online reporting system. He reminded the attendees that both Manual and Online reporting will open on 1 September 2023, with the manual reporting closing on 02 October 2023 and Online reporting closing on 15 January 2024.

The EE workshops are targeted at Employers or Heads of organisations, Academics, Assigned Senior Managers, Consultative forum members, Human Resource Practitioners, Trade Unions, employees and other interested stakeholders.

The national series workshops/roadshows which started on 18 July 2023, will end on 29 August 2023.

The remaining July programme of workshops is as follows:

North West

• Lichtenburg (25 July 2023) – (Scotts Manor Guest House – 21 Bree Street, Retiefs Park)

• Rustenburg (26 July 2023) – (Orion Hotel – 115 Hagia Sophia Drive, Kloof)

KwaZulu-Natal

• Pietermaritzburg (25 July 2023) – Ascot Wedding & Conference Venue, 210 Woodhouse Road, Scottsville)

Source: South African Government News Agency

Following the high incidents of stabbing, violence and gangsterism in and around schools in the province, Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane has launched a school safety programme called “Operation Kgutla Molao”.

Addressing learners at the Qalabotjha Secondary School in Vlakfontein on Thursday, the MEC said the school safety programme is aimed at protecting learners and safeguarding their future.

“We are here to ensure that we are going to protect your future with you. Today we are launching a school safety programme that we will be running across our schools in the province,” he said.

Operation Kgutla Molao has been developed to ensure that the majority of schools are relatively stable, peaceful and disruption-free.

The department considers school safety a top priority in education, said the MEC.

“It’s painful when learners fight among themselves when they are supposed to be protecting each other because the future out there will require you to work together and live together.

“The school safety programme that we are launching will encompass a number of set interventions. Among them are random search and seizures in these schools. This will be done randomly and regularly,” Chiloane said.

The MEC said the Gauteng Department of Education will continue to work closely with communities, other government departments such as the Gauteng Department of Community Safety and law enforcement agencies.

Parents have been urged to play an active role to ensure discipline and regularly check on their children to determine if they are not involved in illegal activities.

“We have developed Operation Kgutla Molao to safeguard the wellbeing and future of learners from destructive behaviour and social ills.

“With integrated support from various law enforcement and community safety structures, we will be able to diminish acts of misconduct and pave way to focus on providing effective learning and teaching at schools across the province,” Chiloane said.

Operation Kgutla Molao aims to create safer schools by promoting social cohesion through non-violence and focusing on delivering effective learning and teaching.

It will target 1700 Gauteng schools, including 275 schools classified as high-risk.

Under Operation Kgutla Molao, the following actions will take place:

Suspension of learners involved in violence and/or sexual harassment. Learners will face disciplinary action by the school and those who are apprehended by the police will face trial.

Disciplinary action will be taken against educators and non-education staff alleged to be involved in sexual harassment and/or violence and also face trial.

Swift intervention by the MEC and GDE officials to understand the causes of this behavior, as well as the implementation of corrective action.

Regular reporting of threats and incidents to law enforcement agencies, especially the South African Police Services.

Meeting with community stakeholders on issues of school safety and protests that also disrupt learning and education.

The campaign will also see the deployment of 5 000 patrollers to schools in the townships in collaboration with the Gauteng Department of Community Safety and Community Policing Forum.

A new cohort of patrollers will be deployed to assist with access control and will be provided with E-Panic buttons.

A holiday school safety pilot programme was implemented in December 2022 and has reduced burglaries at some identified schools.

The programme included regular patrol by professional guards and community awareness campaigns to report incidents to a call centre linked to the police and emergency services.

Source: South African Government News Agency

The President of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Parliament, Dikgang Morudu, has welcomed the signing of the Sign Language Bill into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa as the 12th official language.

Members of the Children’s Parliament have been advocating for the recognition of sign language as an official language to accommodate children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The President hosted a signing ceremony of the South African Sign Language Bill at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Wednesday,

During their 10th sitting in 2021, the members of the Children’s Parliament appointed Hamza Muhammad as their President, a deaf boy from the Dominican School in the Western Cape.

Upon receiving the news, Hamza said the signing of the bill into law “was good news for deaf people”.

“As a deaf person and former President of the Children’s Parliament, I have always wanted South Africa to make sign language official. I am happy to hear that President Cyril Ramaphosa has recognised it as an official language,” Hamza said.

He added that the signing of the bill showed there are no two separate worlds in the country.

“We are all human beings who live in one world and deaf people also have rights. I would like to thank the President for supporting deaf people in the country,” he said.

On 14 July 2023, members of the Children’s Parliament continued to raise their voices regarding the recognition of sign language during their 11th sitting in Bisho, in the Eastern Cape.

Morudu, the current President, said the signing of the bill means that someone is starting to listen to the voices of the children.

The Children’s Parliament is held bi-annually by the Department of Social Development in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, United Nations Children’s Fund and Save Children South Africa.

The new sign language legislation seeks to:

– Advance the cultural acceptance of sign language

– Ensure the realisation of the rights of persons who are deaf and hard of hearing to equal protection and benefit of the law and human dignity, and

– promote inclusive and substantive equality and prevent or eliminate unfair discrimination on the grounds of disability, as guaranteed by section 9 of the Constitution.

South Africa is now the 4th country on the African continent to recognise sign language as an official language after Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda.

Source: South African Government News Agency

Minister Creecy appointed to co-facilitate discussions at a political level amongst ministers responsible for climate change ahead of the global stocktake (GST)

South Africa’s Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, and her counterpart from Denmark, Minister Dan Jørgensen, have been requested by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in its capacity as COP28 Presidency-designate, to co-facilitate discussions at a political level amongst ministers responsible for climate change ahead of the Global Stocktake (GST) discussions.

Minister Creecy is honoured to accept this important and challenging assignment from the President-designate for COP28. It is a recognition of South Africa’s important role in the progressive development of the multilateral process for addressing climate change, from South Africa’s instrumental role in securing the adoption of the Paris Agreement to its current role in support of the implementation phase of the Agreement.

This co-facilitation role entails reaching out and listening to a representative sample of parties, groups and constituencies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to hear their views on what they consider the critical elements of the outcomes of the GST.

The Ministers will report back their findings to the UAE ahead of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2023, where the UAE intends to convene a ministerial meeting on the GST. As such, the co-facilitation is intended to support the UAE in its efforts to guide the international community towards a successful outcome to the GST at COP28.

The Global Stocktake is the main mechanism under the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement to take stock of the collective challenges and opportunities in implementing the Paris Agreement. The purpose of this is to help inform parties in preparing their next nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement to raise ambition and accelerate climate action, as well as to enhance international cooperation.

This is to ensure that the stocktaking exercise and the forward-looking set of recommendations to parties to be adopted at COP28 is comprehensive, covering all aspects of the convention and the global goals in the Paris Agreement, such as mitigation, adaptation and enabling means of implementation and support for developing countries. This work needs to be based on the best available science and equity, so that it is evidence based and fair because countries are at very different levels of development and have divergent national circumstances.

The first Global Stocktake is a critical moment in the multilateral process because it provides an opportunity to reflect both on the collective achievements made under the historic Paris Agreement, as well as to agree on course corrections to bring the international community on course to fully meet the global goals.

The best available science, backed up by the on-the-ground realities in all parts of the world, clearly show that transformational change is required to address climate change, in the context of sustainable development and just transitions.

The GST is the key moment for such strategic level discussions. Its value lies in its facilitative, non-punitive and collective nature, because the focus is on stocktaking and setting the direction for enhanced climate action at the collective level as an international community, where all stakeholders need to work together to address a common threat.

This appointment does not have consequences for South Africa’s country role in the climate negotiations. Our country will develop our negotiating mandate for consideration by Cabinet by the third quarter this year. This mandate will then inform our country position in the negotiations and our discussions with fellow negotiators in the African Group and the G77 plus China.

Enquiries:

Peter Mbelengwa

Cell: 082 611 8197

Source: Government of South Africa