ABSTRACT
The new ANC government enacted various laws in attempts to redress the imbalances created by apartheid’s relentless pursuit of “cheap labor.” More importantly, a Presidential Labor Commission was set up in 1995, charged with the responsibility of establishing a framework in which labor market policies could evolve. The need for restructuring arose out of the acknowledgement that apartheid was designed to make black people inferior politically, socially and economically to whites. However, despite the changes introduced, to this day, the South African labor market is still de facto divided along racial lines with whites tending to occupy positions in the skilled labor market and blacks occupying low-paid jobs in the unskilled labor market.3 According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) study by Standing et al, in 1996, 48.3 percent of the workforce was African; 18.4 percent was colored; 7.5 percent was Indian; and 15.8 percent was white.4 According to Statistics South Africa census in 1996, of these racial categories, the actual number of those employed and unemployed in 1996 was as follows:
The challenge has been how to restructure the economy and labor market policies to make them consistent with both the democratic ideals and new constitutional obligations. While this goal is of primary importance, it has since been contradicted by the adoption of neo-liberal macroeconomic policy and subsequent job losses that directly undercut that initiative. This is often attributed to the fact that South Africa’s transition began at a time when the ideological climate of the global economy was dominated by the pundits who, as Paul Williams reminds us, claimed “there was no alternative” to the neo-liberal path to economic growth.6
