SOUTH Africa's labour legislation is correct, but the political leadership to implement it is lacking, says Anglo Gold Ashanti chairperson Tito Mboweni.

Mboweni, the former governor of the SA Reserve Bank and one-time labour minister, said this on Friday when addressing the Black Management Forum's second annual Young Professional's Summit.

Mboweni's comment on labour legislation was in answer to a question from the floor that it was those laws dealing with employment that many companies found the greatest obstacles to increasing employment.

"The architecture of the labour legislation brought a balance in power relations (between labour and employers)," he said.

He used the example of the health workers strike of 2010.

"When those workers went on strike, they knew there are laws governing the ability of essential services to go on strike. They left ICU (intensive care units) and new-born babies. Those people should have been fired, but the authorities were too scared to take action."

Mboweni went on to say that there was nothing in labour legislation that allowed municipal workers to turn over rubbish bins while they had embarked on strike action and that local authorities should enforce their by-laws to ensure that action is taken against these workers.