Unintended consequences of blunt policy tools are highlighted in Anthea Jeffrey’s brilliant assessment of the newest threat to South African employment. Delusional labour minister Mildred Oliphant is determined to club businesses into Employment Equity submission by imposing hefty fines on those whose staff demographics don’t meet her flawed targets.

Oliphant clearly has no grasp of how jobs are actually created. Entrepreneurs work with scarce resources, so are continuously calculating the best way to allocate them. Eventually, even the most settled will start to seek different geographies if the playing field becomes too heavily weighted against them.

Oliphant’s thought processes are a reminder of the command and control approach which drove the Soviet Union to economic destruction. Punitive legislation kills jobs. Period. What South Africa desperately needs, as Jeffery articulates here, is precisely the opposite to the labour minister’s edict. And as the IRR’s latest research show, the people know it too. – Alec Hogg