IRR to equity consultants: Will you recommend firing employees who refuse racial classification?

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) is today writing to ten employment equity consulting firms across South Africa to ask for clarity on a core issue of liberty and law: will they advise their clients to dismiss employees who refuse to racially classify themselves under the Employment Equity Amendment Act?

This direct engagement follows the implementation of coercive sectoral race quotas in April 2025, now enforced by more than 50 newly deployed equity inspectors. These officials have been tasked with upholding a system built on mandatory racial categorisation. This policy undermines merit-based hiring, punishes success, and promotes job-killing regulations at the expense of economic growth and personal dignity.

Says IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Makone Maja: “Not only do the regulations undermine the rule of law, with evidence of the state's unwillingness to adhere to its own rules, but they highlight the challenge of compliance with the draconian and arbitrary red tape they entrench.”

The Commission for Employment Equity recently reported to Parliament that of the 29 269 reports from public and private companies employing nearly 7.7 million people, or 45% of the share of the employed in the last quarter of 2024, only 1.9% of the reports were provided by government entities and state-owned entities. This demonstrates the state’s blatant refusal to comply with its own racial directives while compelling the private sector to obey.

The IRR’s letter puts forward a critical question to consultants: when an employee refuses racial classification, should that employee be dismissed?

“These questions are around the issue of racial classification and speak to forcible classification in particular. As experts in the field of labour law, which includes definitions of racial categories, how do they recommend their clients manage cases of refusal to classify by race? Would they recommend that anyone refusing should have their employment terminated?” asks Maja.

The IRR also warns of the consequences of this policy, including incentivising dishonesty, strategic misclassification, and the deliberate avoidance of disclosure in pursuit of employment.

Maja says: “Race disclosures will quickly be used to deny people of all races and sexes employment opportunities, unemployment being the penalty of overrepresentation. Should this be the case, we must expect that more and more people will either be reluctant to disclose their race or that they will unclassify with the goal of gaining access to employment. It is therefore all the more important that the experts weigh in on this critical issue.”

As demonstrated in the IRR’s Blueprint for Growth: Breaking the BEE Barrier to Growth, genuine empowerment and inclusive prosperity will come only from pro-growth, market-driven solutions that reward value-add, protect individual choice, and enable job creators to thrive.

Concludes Maja: “Race-based job quotas are not just in direct contradiction with the spirit and text of the Constitution, they are anti-growth, anti-merit, and anti-opportunity. South Africans want merit-based hiring, not bureaucratic box-ticking. Every consultant must choose whether to defend liberty or enforce state racialism.”

Media contact: Makone Maja, IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Tel: 079 418 6676 Email: makone@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za