Affirmative action is for other people. Nobody believes in affirmative action for the services they receive, only for the services other people receive.
It is the supreme example of the politician’s decree, ‘Good for thee but not for me.’ ANC ministers have passed a mass of affirmative action laws, such as on BEE and Employment Equity, for the services other people receive. They would be horrified to receive their own services from affirmative action providers.
A good example is education. The ANC elite wants everybody else to send their children to schools with affirmative action teachers, where 92% of them are ‘black’ to comply with ‘demographic representivity’, but would be horrified at sending its own children to such schools. It prefers Bishops, St Stithians, Roedean and St Johns. ‘Black teachers for thee but not for me.’
This matter was in the news this week with Dis-Chem declaring it would not employ any more white people in its quest to conform with the Employment Equity Act (EEA).
The EEA orders all companies and institutions to strive towards getting the racial composition of their staff the same as that of the population at large. Less than 8% of the population is white, so schools should strive towards having less than 8% white teachers, and the medical profession should strive towards having less than 8% of its brain surgeons white.
As the Dis-Chem managers have reminded us, there are ferocious fines for failing to comply with the EEA – fines that could put Dis-Chem out of business. (The penalties for not complying with the complicated BEE laws are even worse, and include a ten-year prison sentence.)
The EEA subdivides ‘black’ into ‘African’, ‘Coloured’ and ‘Indian’ but does not define these terms, in fact refuses point blank to define what these terms mean. The EEA imposes huge penalties on those who do not comply with a law it refuses to explain.
Every racist law
The University of Cape Town, as you would expect, obediently – even eagerly – implements every racist law the ANC passes. (White VCs are as enthusiastic about the racist laws as black ones.)
UCT dutifully classifies its students as white, African, Coloured and Indian but refuses to explain how it does the classification. (You are not allowed to classify yourself. Max Price, a former VC, told a meeting that if you classified yourself as ‘human’, UCT would automatically reclassify you as ‘white’.)
I wish some company, say Dis-Chem, would invite a team of experts from the Department of Labour to visit its premises and there, before everybody and before a camera crew, explain how to classify every employee by race. The resulting film should be broadcast to the nation.
The official from the labour department would explain, ‘You see this lady here (pointing to a female human being)? She is a coloured. And the reason I classify her as a coloured is because … (here, the official would explain why her anatomy and other aspects define her as coloured for the purposes of the EEA).’ The nation then would have some clarity as to how to avoid being punished by the EEA.
We all have a sense of race. We can all see that Marilyn Monroe is whiter than Serena Williams. But this sense is purely descriptive and not definitive, and there are many instances where we are not sure what race the other person belongs to.
The apartheid government got into a complete mess over its attempts at race classification and race reclassification. The ANC seeks to escape this mess by not itself defining race but demanding that everybody else has compulsory racial classification.
Nothing of the kind
The racial affirmative action laws are said to ‘redress the imbalances of the past’ or to ‘undo the legacy of the past’ or to ‘make a fair starting line for everybody’. They do nothing of the kind. They widen the imbalances of the past, preserve the legacy of apartheid and hobble some people (poor black people) at the starting lane.
Let me give examples.
Siyamthanda Kolisi is the present Springbok rugby captain. He led the Springboks to their greatest victory in the World Rugby Cup. He grew up in a poor household in Zwide, a township outside Port Elizabeth. At the age of 12, because of his rugby talent, he was offered a scholarship at Grey High School, a posh school with a high reputation and with mainly white teachers and staff, all appointed on merit.
Was this a bad thing? Who thinks that it would have been better if Kolisi had remained in Zwide and gone to a township school with black affirmative action teachers?
Well, yes, those teachers might not have been as good as the white teachers at Grey High but that is because the white teachers inherited all the advantages of apartheid whereas the black teachers suffered all of its disadvantages. To ‘redress the imbalances of the past’ and to help black teachers ‘get a fair starting line’, do you think it would have been better for the 12-year-old Kolisi to have gone to a black township school?
Imagine a poor black woman with an infant daughter suffering from a deadly illness. She will die without highly specialised surgery. A benefactor offers to pay all medical costs. The best surgeon happens to be a white man, who has benefited from the legacy of apartheid. Should this woman choose the white surgeon or a black surgeon who is not so good because of the legacy of apartheid? Should she say, ‘I choose the black surgeon, who has less chance of saving my daughter’s life, because I want to undo the legacy of apartheid’?
I usually listen to SAFM radio in the mornings to get the latest news and views. The show is hosted by Stephen Grootes, whom I have never met but with whom I corresponded in the past (over electricity). He seems a nice man. He is charming, affable, sympathetic, eloquent, well-informed on current affairs, and woke.
Public question
Over and over again I’ve heard him say that we must have racial affirmative action to redress the injustices of the past. He spoke about this recently over the Dis-Chem controversy. I have got nothing against him personally and am asking this public question simply because he is a famous and influential media figure advocating affirmative action.
He frequently speaks of his children (and I have no doubt that he is a model father) and their schooling in Gauteng. I’d like to ask him this: ‘What school did you choose for your children? Did you choose a township school with black affirmative action teachers so that you could help redress the legacy of apartheid? Or did you choose some Model-C or private school with more than 8% white teachers? Please explain the reasons for your answer.’
The next time you go to Dis-Chem for medical advice or treatment or drugs, you will know that the white staff members have been chosen purely on merit whereas the black ones might have been chosen to meet EEA racial requirements. Suppose, knowing this, you could choose between a black pharmacist and a white pharmacist there. Which would you choose?
The trouble with all affirmative action appointments is that a stigma taints all black employees. However clever and able the black person is, whether or not she or he would have been appointed on merit anyway, the automatic suspicion in the minds of black and white customers is that they are affirmative action appointments, to be avoided if possible.
Blacks and whites are both well aware of the stigma and the suspicions. This causes resentment among able blacks, anger among whites, and a general lowering of staff morale and a raising of racial antagonism.
Contradictions
The contradictions of affirmative action are by no means confined to South Africa. In Zimbabwe, the Zanu-PF dictatorship also shouts in favour of racial preference and demands ‘indigenisation’ from foreign companies. The ZANU-PF elite also sends its children to schools with mainly white teachers or, even better, to private schools in Europe. When Robert Mugabe needed medical care or surgery, he always flew out of Africa for it. He didn’t want a black African surgeon anywhere near him.
I rather like Dis-Chem and have always had good service from them. I now feel inclined to go to another pharmacy, but I suppose they have the same racial policies but just don’t let the public know about them. Certainly, they have to work under the same racist laws. So, as usual, I’ll probably do nothing about it.
Affirmative action in all its forms, including BEE, EE and transformation, has done immense damage to the South African economy and even more to poor black people.
Eskom is a shining example of forceful BEE and EE. Look at it now.
The solution to past injustices, as the IRR keeps repeating over and over again, is to discriminate in favour of those at a disadvantage and not in favour of any particular race. To redress the imbalance of the past we should put massive priority on improving the education of poor disadvantaged children – whatever their colour. (It happens that most are black.)
This means providing them with the best possible teachers, regardless of race.
All black children deserve the education that Kolisi got at Grey School, and that the children of President Ramaphosa and Minister Pandor got at St Stithians, Bishops and Herschel.
[Image: Barbara Bonanno from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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