{{South Africa’s workplaces are still heavily racially skewed 20 years after the fall of apartheid, with only one fifth of top executive positions held by blacks, said a report published Wednesday.}}<\/p>\n
“The majority of work places are still ‘lilly white’ at the top and often male over-represented, with a few pockets of black and women executives,” Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant commented on the findings by a special commission in her ministry.<\/p>\n
Overall, blacks represent around 75 percent of South Africa’s economically active population, compared to just under 11 percent of whites.<\/p>\n
Yet almost two-thirds of senior roles in Africa’s second-largest economy were held by whites last year, according to the study, compared to 19.8% of black people.<\/p>\n
South Africans of Indian descent held 8.4% of top jobs while those of mixed race, known locally as Coloureds, had 5.1% of positions.<\/p>\n
Foreign nationals filled up the remaining 4.1%.<\/p>\n
The disparity at the top of South Africa’s corporate ladder exists despite employment equity legislation to address the legacy of racial exclusion in the labour market created by apartheid.<\/p>\n
The ANC government, which has ruled South Africa since the first post-apartheid elections in 1994, has been criticised for not doing enough to address poverty.<\/p>\n
Meantime in a separate report, the statistics office pointed to “large disparities” in average earnings between racial groups in a country rated one of the most unequal societies in the world.<\/p>\n
Last year, median “earnings of the white population group increased to 10,500 rand ($1,000, 730 euros), while among the coloured (mixed race) workers there was a decline.”<\/p>\n
“At 2,600 rand in 2013, the earnings of black Africans amounted to barely 25 percent of white earnings,” said the statistics office.<\/p>\n
The labour market figures come just a month ahead of elections that promise to be the toughest ever faced by the ruling African National Congress.<\/p>\n
A key issue is the job market: out of a working age population of 35 million, only around 15 million South Africans are actually employed.<\/p>\n
The statistics office report also published Wednesday found that just 400,000 formal jobs were created in the five years up to 2013.<\/p>\n
“Employment in the formal sector increased from 10.1 million in 2008 to 10.5 million in 2013,” Statistics South Africa said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Unemployment rose to 24.7% last year, up from 22.5% five years earlier, as the total number of jobless increased by half a million to 4.9 million.<\/p>\n
As part of its election campaign, the ANC has promised to create six million job opportunities in the next five years if it is re-elected, despite the country’s annual growth struggling to move beyond 3.5% over the past four years.<\/p>\n
In 2012, South Africa’s unemployment rate, at 24.7%, was highest among emerging market economies, according to the statistics bureau.<\/p>\n
South Africa last week lost its position as Africa’s largest economy to Nigeria after Abuja announced a long-overdue re-basing of the country’s gross domestic product.<\/p>\n
{AFP}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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