Latest from the IRR

Letter: Havoc of quota fines - Business Day, 26th July 2012

Helen Suzman was right in saying in 1998 that the Employment Equity Act was premature at best — and that the government must first fix the skills shortage among black South Africans. Tragically, that has still to be done. This leaves employers seeking to fulfil their quotas little choice but to take on people who lack experience and competence but have (as the Employment Equity Act states) the "capacity to acquire, within a reasonable time, the ability to do the job".

Press Release: Open letter to the Minister of Basic Education - 25th July 2012.

Highlighting the improvements South Africa has made in the provision of physical infrastructure in schools misses the bigger picture: that the majority of South African children will not emerge from the education system with the skills, expertise, or competence necessary to thrive in South Africa’s increasingly tertiary economy.

Letter: Unworkable red tape - Business Day, 17th July 2012.

What SA needs are proper schools, vastly increased investment and effective incentives to business to expand the jobs they offer. Instead, however, the ruling party is once again seeking to truss the private sector up in yet more reams of unworkable red tape.

ANC performs unedifying striptease before a global audience - Business Day, 11th June 2012.

The Institute's CEO, John Kane-Berman, writes that the ANC is stripping away its respectability and revealing the unpleasantness underneath. This is due to recent ANC reaction to Brett Murray's 'The Spear' painting, attacks on Nedbank CEO Reuel Khoza after his complaints of government ineptitude, and the Protection of State Information Bill to stop the Media reporting on corruption under the guise of protecting national security.

Press Release: Canny amendments to the Protection of State Information Bill - 28th March 2012.

Canny amendments to the Protection of State Information Bill of 2011 (the Bill) might suffice to persuade a majority of Constitutional Court judges that the measure now passes constitutional muster, says the South African Institute of Race Relations. The amendments genuflect towards the Constitution’s guaranteed right ‘to receive or impart information’. However, they are likely to mean little in practice.