“Last week your piece on marbles took the Mickey out of BEE,” says Seamus. “This was morally wrong, very inappropriate and not nearly as funny as you doubtless think.”
“Well, it takes a Mick to spot the Mick,” I retort. Sean, the fourth in the party, shifts uncomfortably. He is Irish too.
Our picnic began promisingly, full of chitchat about who did what and to whom, coupled with a spot of gathering our Rosés while we may. Were it not for a timely intervention, it might have been quite spoiled by this exchange. Our rescuer was good old Noah, ever the peacemaker, who insists that we behave. No jibes, please, he says, looking darkly at us both.
I jib but am unabashed. Seamus jibs, but is unashamed. But we are bright enough to do as we are told. There is nothing that says women and Irishmen are required to be stupid.
We four souls are sitting in what Romantic poets like to call a sylvan grove. We are letting the grass grow under our bottoms in this most delightful of greenswards (well, garden, really). Since I have invited the guests and prepared the picnic, I am the hostess but prefer to dignify myself as the arbour master. “Master”, not “mistress”; I do not want you to think that I sit unclothed among well-dressed men, all languid and recumbent, in the manner of that hussy in Manet’s famous painting (Déjeuner sur l’herbe, you will be smart enough to recall).
As hostess, I have every right to do the hosting, but Noah, who knows more of courtcraft than courtliness, quite fails to twig and is out on a limb. Out of his tree, you may conclude after considering our exchange. He is become opinionated.
Anticipating events, I groan inwardly, but the Irishmen know how to handle such matters, being much practised in the art of listening. First, they stretch out, then they yawn, then they charge their glasses with the blushful Hippocrene (Quite enough of the poetic references – Ed).
“What you loosely term BEE,” says our learned counsel, “but should call B-BBEE, is a serious matter. It demands earnest consideration, proper analysis, thorough interrogation, and thoughtful evaluation.
“Definitions definitely help”
“Let’s start with nomenclature. We need definitions. Definitions definitely help.
“’Racialism’ is the process of categorising and handling people on the basis of race but without preferring one race above another. In common with racialism, ‘racism’ also categorizes and handles people by race, but differs in this – it contemplates that one race, typically seen as superior, will be preferred above another.
“There is nothing wrong in principle with racialism. Consider the political system of Singapore, which underscores my point. In the belief that this would secure peace and harmony, which up till then were sorely lacking, the people of the country were separated into four races – Chinese, Indians, Malays, and ‘the others’. Quotas, demographically determined from time to time to eliminate partiality, were thereupon set for each group, and since then, decisions across the governmental spectrum have been made on a silo-by-silo basis. ‘Four hundred houses per thousand for you lot as your group is forty per cent, and so on .…’ You get the picture.
“The system works well enough in practice. After a few hiccups, Singapore has become socially stable. In addition, it is so prosperous that, where once it was the second poorest in the world, it is now the second richest.”
“Non-racialism at work – raise your glass!” I cry. Noah scowls. “No,” he says, “Singapore is a multiracial society, not a non-racial one. Do get that into your pretty little head.”
I have heard this reference to my head before, and I can tell you, the injunction is not meant as a compliment.
“Separateness”
“Now I must turn to South Africa. Under apartheid, which literally means separateness, ours was also a multiracial society. Each racial group was divided up into silos (black, white, Indians, and coloured), and the members of each group were expected to flourish discretely within their own silo. Comparing the two, we can say that South Africa was the very equal of Singapore. But to stop there would be facile, because SA differed in being a racist society as well. Under apartheid, whites were preferred above ‘anderskleuriges’, and Blacks were treated as second-class citizens. In contrast, no group in Singapore was considered better than any other.
“In sum, our system was more than one of mere racialism, which can and should be race-neutral: it was racism through and through. So bad was our polity that apartheid was condemned as a crime against humanity. Rightly so. Racism of this sort creates the illusion that the one group, being superior, is entitled to the good life while the other is inferior enough to be no more than ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’.
“No surprise, then, that our lawgiver, framing the Constitution upon transition, set about outlawing racism. Whether it went further and proscribed racialism is a matter of debate, but the better view is that it did, so I think we can accept that South Africa abjures not just apartheid-style racism but also Singapore-style multiracialism.
“In this basis, I am entitled to conclude,” says Noah, now so much the lawyer that I fear the exaction of a fee, “that we must regard B-BBEE as a breach of the Constitution at the level both of racialism and racism.
“Four silos”
“In structure, it is an exemplar of multi-racialism. Conceptually, it divides the races up into four silos and then sets quotas, based on demographic representation, that are each subdivided by gender to make eight in all. You know, four times two is eight.”
Lawyers learn to be smug in the first year at Law School, self-satisfied in their second, condescending in their third, and overbearing in their fourth. No wonder Shakespeare invited us to kill them all.
“In practical application, it is the exemplar of racism.” Noah proceeds. “The legislation is being employed to promote development and growth only within black silos. It is apartheid ‘by other means’, a species of social engineering that would impress an ardent racialist and a thing debased enough to gladden a virulent racist.”
Noah pauses long enough to provide scope for intervention. It comes from our resident Parlour Pink, dear Seamus.
“Come off it, man. The Economic Empowerment of the Act’s title has a rider – namely, that the law is designed to promote black empowerment. Black, black, black. Its cardinal purpose is to improve the lot of black people by creating quotas that, if fulfilled, secure a position for them in every echelon in society. It’s affirmative action writ large.”
“No,” says Noah, “whatever this may be, it is not a species of affirmative action. The system is constituted in such a way that, by definition, it cannot satisfy the requirements of upliftment. In structure it demands that the quota in each and every silo must be satisfied, and this applies as much to whites as to blacks. What this means is that whites, male and female, are to be preferred if, by reference to the standard set by the quota, they are numerically below par. Whatever this system may be, it cannot be affirmative action. Whites (white men at any rate) are most certainly not the victims of past prejudice and, just as certainly, can make no claim to present disadvantage.”
Desperate to bring things to a head, I venture a summary. “What you are saying, dearest No-All, is that the BEE system is racialist in concept and racist in application, which on either basis makes it a breach of the Constitution. You are saying this is very bad.”
The summary, not easy to frame, should have been a complete answer, a killer-diller, but lefties like Seamus are hard to please.
“Elevate blacks”
“In theory, this may be true,” says the man, “but something surely needs to be done to elevate blacks. If people are turning a blind eye to the deficiencies of the system, isn’t that actually a good thing, blacks being so marginalised and all? And if people think it is a good thing, isn’t it as well that no one litigates over it?”
“Perhaps,” says Noah, “but you will concede that deliberately flouting the Constitution on so major a matter isn’t a great way to run a country.”
Sean has had enough. He has become glassy-eyed, and I mean that literally – he has raised his glass to eye-level and is waving it around. “Pass the bottle, there’s a good girl, and let’s talk about one of the other taboos. Sex, say, or religion.”
The bottle duly circulates. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Sean helps himself to more than his quota, but I keep quiet or, in poetic lingo, I quoth nowt. I see no reason why I should be quoted on quotas, and, lest there be confusion on the point, I shall henceforth lie low on silos.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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