PRESS RELEASE: RP Condemns Government’s Instructed Use Of The 1950 Population Registration Act

The Referendum Party (RP) condemns the revelation by Sakeliga and NEASA that the Department of Employment and Labour has instructed employers to use the repealed 1950 Population Registration Act to classify employees by race. This once again confirms that South Africa has become the most race-regulated country in the world, led by a government willing to reach back into Apartheid-era legislation to force through its failing and destructive racial quota system. 

The Population Registration Act was abolished in 1991. Yet instead of developing a lawful framework, the ANC-led GNU is now instructing employers to abide by this repealed Apartheid law - effectively pushing the legal and political risk onto the private sector under threat of massive fines. This instruction forms part of the government’s attempt to enforce the Employment Equity Amendment Act of 2023, which compels businesses to meet rigid and racist demographic quotas. 

RP Secretary General Robert King said: “The ANC knows that the world is increasingly disgusted by South Africa’s race-based laws. They’re desperately trying to hide the truth, as we saw with the vandalism of Solidariteit’s billboard before the G20 Summit last month. But it keeps coming out. Just as the Apartheid government found it impossible to maintain its race regime, the ANC will soon learn the same lesson.” 

RP fully supports Sakeliga and NEASA’s position: employers should not be required to classify staff by race, and the government’s instruction is unconstitutional and unacceptable. Beyond its moral defects, race-based policy is simply bad policy. It has undermined economic growth, driven away investment, entrenched corruption, and delivered little benefit to the poor. 

RP supports all efforts to oppose race-based policy and is fighting back with its own Non-Racialism Bill submitted to Parliament earlier this year, which proposes an amendment to Section 9 of the Constitution to ensure all equality measures are based on need and merit, not race. 

South Africans deserve a future where the state can no longer coerce them into racial categories.