Chikunga threatens to name and shame departments that fake disability hiring

Government departments and private companies that keep treating disability hiring as paperwork will be named in public, the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities said on Friday, as she pushed public institutions to move faster on employment equity targets.

Sindisiwe Chikunga was speaking at the official launch of the South African Revenue Service’s Deaf Accessibility and Cohort Programme in Pretoria. She said the initiative shows how inclusion moves from principle into practice through employment, skills development, accessible communication and institutional capability, and she commended SARS for measures aimed at communication access and service delivery for deaf people.

“Those who continue to pay lip service to employment equity will be named, and they will be shamed,” Chikunga said.

The targets she put on the record are specific. The National Development Plan sets a goal of 7% representation of persons with disabilities by 2030. Cabinet has approved an annual increase of one percentage point, with a target of 5% for the 2026/27 financial year. Chikunga said her department is leading by example, having reached 5.56% representation.

Her argument was that the pipeline starts long before the job advert. Inclusive workplaces, she said, must be supported by an inclusive education system, because barriers at school carry through into working life. She listed inaccessible school infrastructure, inadequate assistive devices, a shortage of qualified South African Sign Language teachers and interpreters, and insufficient teacher training to support learners with disabilities.

She also pointed to technology, including artificial intelligence, automated captioning, sign language recognition and speech-to-text tools, as a way to widen access to education and employment. That gain is not automatic, she warned. Deliberate investment in devices, connectivity and training is needed so that learners in all communities benefit, not only those with resources.

On partnerships, Chikunga proposed a dedicated employment stream for persons with disabilities building on the SARS programme, and closer ties between special schools and State-Owned Enterprises, with companies using Corporate Social Investment budgets to fix infrastructure and educational needs at those schools.

“As part of this effort, we hope to bring together the CEOs of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), and industry associations to commit a percentage of their Corporate Social Investment budgets towards turning around the state of special schools and improving the prospects of youth with disabilities,” she said.

She added that SARS, while not strictly an SOE in the conventional sense, carries significant convening power across the public finance ecosystem, and asked it to work with her department to make the project real.

Chikunga said her department is working with organisations representing persons with disabilities to build a credible database so that departments and public entities can identify and recruit suitably qualified candidates, and she encouraged government, business and society to buy from Supported Employment Enterprises, the state-owned companies that employ persons with disabilities.

The launch fell within Disability Rights Awareness Month, observed from 3 November to 3 December under the theme “Creating Strategic Multi-Sectoral Partnerships for a Disability-Inclusive Society”. The month culminates on 3 December, when South Africa joins the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Chikunga spoke under the theme “Every Hand has a Voice. Shaping an Inclusive Future.”

She grounded the push in the Constitution, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the African Disability Protocol, describing disability inclusion as a continuing constitutional imperative.

This report is drawn from the SAnews (South African Government News Agency) account of the launch, which summarises the Minister’s remarks rather than reproducing them in full: https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/chikunga-pushes-accelerate-disability-employment