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Affirmative action debate was a pointless exercise

Rhoda Kadalie
is executive director of the Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust. She is a well-known academic and served on the Human Rights Commission for three years. She regularly writes a column for Business Day.

The SA 2014 debate on Affirmative Action (AA), chaired by JP Landman on kykNET on 23rd July 2004 was a pointless exercise. Unless chaired impartially the effort was going to be meaningless, and this was precisely the problem with the show. Landman indulged the political hogwash of Ernest Messina and Salie Manie mainly because they are black, and Izanne Beukes, an obvious Johnny-come-lately, to the exclusion of Dirk Herman, who was the only expert on the topic.

Coming from a conservative organisation, Solidarity, did not necessarily make Herman’s views conservative. He was the only one that actually studied the issue and confidently referred to Malaysia, India and the USA, the countries from which the most appropriate lessons for South Africa can be drawn. It was a pity Landman did not give Herman more exposure, because he would have given windbag Messina, a historian, and not a human resource specialist in any way, a run for his money.

Messina and Manie thought that their pompous political statements that sent whites on a guilt trip constituted Affirmative Action. They, with the help of politically correct Beukes, did not move away from the clichés, namely: AA is about diversity; AA is redress of discrimination; diversity is a business decision; AA is about managing the process; others must help government correct the imbalances of the past.

Herman, on the other hand, raised specifics and dealt with the critical questions that strike at the heart of the polemics of AA. He dared to deal with the world of realpolitik and ask the uncomfortable questions about why AA was failing in SA. He was the only one that defined AA as only one, and not the only, step towards creating equal opportunity.

In the little time that he was given he managed to convey the following difficulties with AA that the others could not even begin to engage with:

1. It is commonly thought that AA is an agreement between the elites of the oppressed group and the ruling party to buy off some section of the discontented group. If there is not enough to go around, do you appease some by drawing them into the system, like BEE or the currently flawed implementation of AA at public sector level? The huge brain drain of doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers, etc surely indicates that there is something wrong with the implementation, in addition to the current rate of vacancies (20 000 posts) in the public sector.

2. Some believe that AA should be about fundamental change and that it should eradicate class inequality. But can it, as a very limited process? Unless government redistributes resources fairly, AA alone will not address the huge inequalities that exist in South Africa.

3. Some believe that AA generates other inequalities, that AA violates the universal principle of non-discrimination. Is AA not perfectly compatible with universal non-discrimination?

4. Does AA get rid of competent white males as argued by Carmel Rickard’s article in the Sunday Times on 18th July 2004 apropos Advocate Geoff Budlender who was overlooked by the Judicial Services Commission for a post on the bench? Is transformation only about racial redress? Is a very competent white judge who was also part of the struggle for justice, with an international reputation, not more than competent for the job? Why not use the very whites that benefited from apartheid to transform South Africa?

5. Is AA about employing suitably qualified staff on the basis of merit, skills and qualifications and not race and gender alone? Ascribed status, biological criteria alone, do not redress apartheid. It may exacerbate the situation. But the use of colour on occasion may be justified, for example, the use of a black actor with talent equal to that of a white actor, to play the role of Mandela or Tutu in a movie or play. Here colour may be a legitimate criterion of appointment, but not always.

6. Is AA is about lowering standards? When Dr Mamphela Ramphele was appointed as the first black Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town many white people asked this question. Her pert response was, "I am here to raise the standards." When blacks/women are skilled and trained for the job, they do indeed transform. If not, they are set up for failure and reinforce the worst racial stereotypes.

I have no gripes with Affirmative Action. In fact, I am a strong advocate of it, provided it is done properly. Its poor implementation has created the misperceptions that we have today. AA is not only about redressing past imbalances. It refers to a very specific group of policies and programmes by government and NGOs to redress the inequalities of race, gender, ethnicity and disability that exist in South African society and that will always exist. It is not only the apartheid past that must be redressed but also the discriminatory future that is being entrenched by the current dispensation!

AA measures are necessary to make equal opportunity a reality for excluded groups.

AA is defined as a systematic means, determined by the employer in consultation with senior management, employees and unions, of achieving equal employment opportunity for women, disabled, and black people (including coloureds and Indians). AA is compatible with appointment and promotion on the basis of skills, merit and qualification.

It is important to ask what kind of programme is suited to the organisation, as political circumstances require different interventions. How do we apply AA in the admissions policy at the University of Zululand, for example? Is it AA for Indians, whites, or other ethnic groups to the exclusion of Zulu speakers, who are in the majority? How does AA operate in the Western Cape with its peculiar ethnic constellation? At the University of Cape Town, for example, coloured and Indian students are in the minority. Does AA overlook coloured students simply because the province is predominantly coloured? Does regional or national demographics prevail in the application of AA?

AA is addressed through a full range of policies intended to reduce inequality of whatever nature, such as:

laws, codes of good practice

regulations

court orders

public interventions

private actions.

The intention is to provide certain public and private goods, such as admission into schools, colleges, universities, jobs, promotions, business loans, land rights, to historically excluded groups for the purpose of achieving equality.

The success of implementation depends on the following key components of AA:

how we go about selection and recruitment

whether there is an induction process for newcomers

whether there is ongoing training and staff development

whether there is the possibility of promotion from within

whether there are attempts to change the organisational culture to create a critical mass of those excluded groups

whether the organisation has set goals and timetables rather than quotas or anti-discriminatory policy enforcement as is commonly practised in SA today

whether special training programmes exist to groom and mentor and grow its own organisational timber.

Unless all the measures mentioned above are adhered to, the poor implementation of Affirmative Action will merely mean affirmative inaction as is currently the case in the public sector. The reliance on consultants and the huge amount of money spent on consultants proves that the criterion of race is predominant, and not those of merit, skills and qualifications. If we appoint unsuitably qualified women, blacks, disabled, etc, we set people up for failure and reinforce racial stereotypes that certain people are unable to do the job. The decline of local authorities and the health and education sectors can be firmly placed at the door of the poor implementation of AA. Too much of this is going on at the moment and few will acknowledge it publicly, even though it is the topic of many dinner conversations.

The time has come for a Truth Commission on Affirmative Action.

LitNet: 29 July 2004

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