More jobs and better education are what most South Africans regard as priorities – in contrast to low levels of support for race-based BEE, according to the Racism Is NOT The Problem Initiative.
It argued that a far better alternative to BEE – which is best described as ‘Blatant Elite Enrichment’ – is Economic Empowerment for the Disadvantaged (EED), which would abandon the use of race as a proxy for disadvantage and rely instead on a socio-economic means test, similar to that used by the social grants system, to identify the actual needs of people whose plight has not been addressed by race-based measures.
The Racism Is NOT The Problem initiative says polling shows the scale of support among South Africans for a non-racial approach to tackling lingering disadvantage.
The data shows:
• 72.8% of South Africans believe that more jobs and better education instead of more BEE are the best ways to improve their lives;
• Only 3.8% of black South Africans believe that more BEE is the best way to improve their lives;
• 60.5% of South Africans believe that appointments should be made on merit, with special training for the disadvantaged, while 20% believe in appointments solely on merit; and
• Only 5.9% of black South Africans believe that only black people should be appointed for a long time ahead.
In a statement yesterday, Gabriel Crouse, Head of Campaigns at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), said: “The primary problem with BEE is not who it appoints, but how it appoints. It relies on a twin absurdity; that adult children of black billionaires are considered ‘disadvantaged’, and that the value of work is your appearance, not what you do. This creates the incentive to pose rather than produce.”
If you would like to know more about the new Racism is NOT the problem initiative, click this link.