Private relations, encompassing employment, are also subject to the prohibition of discrimination provision. National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination. This argument is myopic and devoid of the necessary historical, political, experiential, social, economic, ideological, etc., context. It is out of touch with the realities of past and present human rights violations that permitted the privileging of a minority of the South African population. The international community's experience, separate and apart from the South African Apartheid reality, forcefully makes the case for state intervention.
Inequities are the result of deliberate intervention by one group to privilege itself.
State action to redress and correct human rights violations, such as the South African EE Act, is vital for the effective transformation of an inequitable society. And South Africa is far from being the only inequitable society it simply has brutally enforced inequity through Apartheid. The Employment Equity Act is the direct result of the equality provision in the Bill of Rights. It operationalizes the commitment by the international community and South Africa's need to redress and prevent inequities.