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South Africa´s legacy of apartheid has created massive social and economic inequalities along racial and gender lines, resulting for instance, in the under-representation of Blacks and women in the higher echelons of industry and at decision-making levels in the public service. In order to eradicate historical discriminatory employment policies and practices in the workplace based on race, gender and disability and redress imbalances, in 1998 Parliament enacted the Employment Equity legislation, which describes measures through which organisations should speed up their transformation efforts. These measures are collectively known as affirmative action. Affirmative action was conceived as a vehicle that would improve the employment and promotion opportunities of Blacks, women and the disabled. However, the goal of transforming South African business organisations and public service from discriminatory structures to ones which reflect the demographic composition and values of South African as a whole has not been without controversy.

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Leslie Seth Kgapola holds M Soc Sci Industrial Sociology & Labour Studies (University of Pretoria); B Soc Sc Hons) Industrial Relations and B Soc Sc Industrial Psychology (University of Natal). His research interests lie in understanding the public sector employee relations and workplace dispute resolution mechanism.

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