Editorial: Employment equity must go beyond race and numbers

The appointment of eight new Employment Equity Commissioners should not become another ceremonial changing of the guard at an institution whose mandate goes to the heart of one of Namibia’s most stubborn realities.

More than three decades after independence, the workplace remains one of the clearest mirrors of our inequality, reflected not only in who occupies senior positions, but in who earns what, who gets promoted, who receives opportunities and, increasingly, who knows whom.

The Employment Equity Commission exists because Namibia inherited an economy deliberately structured to favour some racial groups while excluding the majority from skilled employment, management and economic opportunity.

That history cannot be wished away, and racial transformation must remain central to employment equity.

Yet transformation becomes hollow when companies learn how to satisfy numerical requirements on paper while the old patterns of privilege survive in salaries, management structures and access to opportunity.

The new commissioners must be prepared to interrogate that reality rather than simply administer compliance.

It should concern the Commission when two people performing work of equal value receive substantially different remuneration without credible justification.

It should concern the Commission when qualified employees remain trapped in junior positions while promotions repeatedly follow friendships, family relationships, political connections or proximity to those in power.

The uncomfortable conversation Namibia must also have is about inequality within previously disadvantaged groups themselves.

Employment equity cannot become a convenient vehicle through which a small, connected elite accumulates opportunities in the name of correcting historical injustice.

When the same families, networks and circles repeatedly secure senior appointments, lucrative opportunities and preferential treatment while equally qualified Namibians remain outside the door, that is not transformation.

It is privilege wearing a different face.

This is where the Commission must become far more assertive.

Its work should examine actual remuneration patterns, promotion practices, recruitment, training opportunities and the treatment of graduates and junior employees who are sometimes expected to perform substantial work for allowances that bear little relationship to their responsibilities.

Women, persons with disabilities and historically marginalised communities must similarly experience transformation as something tangible rather than something celebrated in corporate reports.

Government must also stop treating employment equity compliance as separate from public procurement.

A company cannot disregard Namibia’s transformation objectives with one hand and collect millions from the public purse with the other.

Persistent and serious non-compliance should attract meaningful penalties and should affect eligibility for government tenders and other public contracts.

Taxpayers should not finance companies that refuse to respect the social obligations attached to doing business in Namibia.

The eight commissioners inherit an institution that can either become a stronger instrument for fairness or settle into the comfort of reports, statistics and compliance certificates.

Namibia needs the former.

Employment equity must challenge both the inherited inequalities of the past and the new inequalities created by nepotism, favouritism and connections.

After more than 30 years of independence, transformation must mean more than changing the faces at the top.

It must change who gets the opportunity, who earns fairly, who advances on merit and who gets left behind.

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