Race quotas and ‘decent work’ are barriers to jobs
No society can prosper by suppressing enterprise and distrusting consent. A job freely offered and freely accepted is not exploitation. It is the first step out of poverty.
Written by: Eustace Davie
This right of reply was ignored by Mail & Guardian, and has been published here so that bad ideas don’t go unchallenged.
In the Mail & Guardian of 6 May 2025 Dr Khwezi Mabasa argues that race quotas and the enforcement of “decent work” standards will stimulate economic growth. He invokes the International Labour Organization (ILO) as if both policies naturally stem from a shared commitment to worker dignity.
This is misleading.
The ILO’s decent work framework supports affirmative action measures aimed at addressing inequality, but only as temporary solutions. Crucially, it does not endorse permanent racial quotas or systematic racial workforce engineering. Mabasa’s citation of the ILO is thus not accurate. He misappropriates that institution’s credibility to defend a policy position that it explicitly rejects.
Mabasa’s conflation of racial quotas with the Decent Work doctrine attempts to lend legitimacy to race-based policies by associating them with the superficially appealing rhetoric of worker protection. Far from enhancing dignity or employment, the Decent Work doctrine imposes rigid labour standards that systematically exclude millions of South Africans from the labour market.
The “decent work” doctrine and its consequences
These enforced standards criminalise jobs that do not comply with arbitrary government checklists, regardless of whether jobseekers would willingly accept them.
Under this doctrine, work is lawful only if it satisfies a prescribed checklist: mandated wages, benefits, fixed hours, and legal protections, regardless of productivity or consent. Jobs that do not comply are prohibited, even if the worker is willing to take them.
At the heart of this system is the Single Breadwinner Fallacy — the idea that every job must support an entire household. This outdated model, born in post-war Europe, assumes that one employed man can provide for a whole family on a single income. This is a foreign doctrine, suited to affluent European economies. Yet, South African policymakers, under union pressure, have forced it into law, with no regard for the terrible scale of our unemployment.
By enforcing this standard, the law disqualifies the very jobs that allow multiple breadwinners to support a household — part-time, informal, and entry-level roles; yet this is how most poor South Africans survive.
There is neither economic nor moral justification for outlawing lawful effort. There is nothing decent about sustained unemployment, and no virtue in criminalising work that consenting adults have the right to choose.
The race quota contradiction
Dr Mabasa appeals to the International Labour Organization as though its authority lends weight to race quotas. He does not say that the ILO permits racial preference only as a temporary measure. Nor does he explain why South Africa now imposes permanent racial targets in law, with no reference to merit or to individual need.
The Employment Equity Amendment Act, 2023, authorises the state to dictate the racial composition of workplaces, with penalties for those who do not comply. It follows the same logic as job reservation under apartheid: individuals are classified by race, and legal preference is given to one group over others. This undermines the dignity of work and erodes the trust on which a functioning economy depends.
Race quotas limit opportunity, drive out skills and investment, and make firms more cautious. Compliance replaces output. Smaller businesses, unable to absorb the risk, avoid hiring or exit the formal economy. Jobs are lost long before penalties are enforced.
Dr Mabasa suggests that small businesses are exempt. While technically true in limited contexts, this is misleading in practice. Any enterprise that hopes to grow, tender for contracts, or operate within formal supply chains must obtain compliance certification. The legal requirement may come later, but the economic pressure begins the moment a business starts to succeed.
Conclusion: Free people to work
These policies do not expand employment; they prevent it. By criminalising voluntary agreements and enforcing racial targets by law, the state has made it harder to hire, harder to grow, and harder to work.
The result is plain to see: Massive unemployment, deepening poverty, and no way out. There are fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, and no entry point for willing unemployed people.
Everyone understands that half a loaf is better than no bread. In South Africa, several half loaves are what keep households alive. Yet the law denies them even that — by outlawing the very work that makes it possible for multiple breadwinners to contribute what they can.
No society can prosper by suppressing enterprise and distrusting consent. A job freely offered and freely accepted is not exploitation. It is the first step out of poverty.
Let the people work. Let the people choose. That is the only decent way to build a free and prosperous society.
Eustace Davie is a Director of the Free Market Foundation and author of Jobs for the Jobless.