"The employment laws are completely unrealistic. You cannot overcome that in only 10 years. It will take at least another generation before young people are properly qualified"
About this Quote
“Completely unrealistic” is the kind of bluntness that only works when you’ve spent a career watching policy collide with reality. Helen Suzman isn’t sneering at the idea of employment protections; she’s warning that laws, however righteous on paper, can’t instantly reverse the damage of a society engineered to keep most people undereducated and underpaid. The line carries the weight of someone who fought apartheid from inside Parliament and knew how the state could sabotage lives not just through brutality, but through bureaucracy.
Her time horizon is the tell: “not in only 10 years,” “at least another generation.” That isn’t fatalism so much as an indictment of wishful governance. Post-authoritarian reform often pretends the starting line is neutral, as if equal rights can substitute for equal preparation. Suzman’s subtext is that employment law becomes a scapegoat when deeper investments are missing: schools that were deliberately starved, training pipelines that never existed, companies that benefited from cheap labor now asked to compete on “merit.” By framing “young people” as not “properly qualified,” she risks sounding patronizing, but the sharper implication is structural: qualification is produced by institutions, and apartheid’s institutions were designed to withhold it.
Politically, the quote doubles as a warning against symbolic timetables. Ten-year targets flatter governments and donors; they also create impatience that can curdle into backlash. Suzman is pushing for a longer moral memory: don’t judge the reform by early friction, and don’t confuse legislative change with social repair.
Her time horizon is the tell: “not in only 10 years,” “at least another generation.” That isn’t fatalism so much as an indictment of wishful governance. Post-authoritarian reform often pretends the starting line is neutral, as if equal rights can substitute for equal preparation. Suzman’s subtext is that employment law becomes a scapegoat when deeper investments are missing: schools that were deliberately starved, training pipelines that never existed, companies that benefited from cheap labor now asked to compete on “merit.” By framing “young people” as not “properly qualified,” she risks sounding patronizing, but the sharper implication is structural: qualification is produced by institutions, and apartheid’s institutions were designed to withhold it.
Politically, the quote doubles as a warning against symbolic timetables. Ten-year targets flatter governments and donors; they also create impatience that can curdle into backlash. Suzman is pushing for a longer moral memory: don’t judge the reform by early friction, and don’t confuse legislative change with social repair.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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