SAIRR: The ANC's BEE & AA “policies are harmful to race relations, injurious to equality of opportunity, destructive of entrepreneurship..”

“We are looking for hard working teachers who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.” AIPCS Principal's Philosophy

If the ANC 'care' about black people; why are they implementing BEE and AA policies, which emphasise, re-enforce and encourage black entitlement, victimhood, low black self esteem and dependency on the goverment?

If the ANC care about serving the people, according to the people's preference's; why do the ANC ignore the people's demands that labour policies should be based on merit, and not on race/colour?

Immigration and Refugee Board Member William Davis, 27 August 2009 ruling in the case of Brandon Carl Huntley, found that:

[100] Reports emanating from the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) indicated that about a fifth of white South Africans had immigrated over the past 10 years with the main reasons given by immigrants were crime and affirmative action, so said Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon in Cape Town. He accuses the ANC government of being indifferent to the lot of minorities, especially whites, and has expressed hostility to their interest.

Why We Are White Refugees Petition to Federal Court Justices, Canada [Sign Petition]:

[4.13] South African Citizens Views on Affirmative Action, and Black Economic Empowerment Laws: A report released by the Helen Suzman Foundation, Who Needs Affirmative Action?, Focus Survey, 19 Sept. 2000, provides evidence of three surveys done, which document that the majority (over 60% of South Africans of all colours, support merit, over AA or BEE):

[4.13.1] A 1994 Post Election Survey on Affirmative Action revealed that 61% of all voters, including 52% of Africans wanted to see appointments made strictly on merit, "even if some people do not make progress as a result".

[4.13.2] A 1996 Survey on Affirmative Action found that only 23% of voters took a hardline position in favour of affirmative action, whereas 54% were clearly opposed believing either that "There should be special training of African/blacks but the best applicants for jobs should be appointed whoever they are," or that "There should be no such policies and jobs must go strictly on merit." A middle group of 22% believed that "preference should be given to African/blacks, but if others are better qualified, they should get the job." Thus 76% regarded merit, not race, as the overriding criterion.

[4.13.3] A June/July 2000 Affirmative Action Survey, found that 22% took a hardline position in favour of affirmative action, while 56% took a hardline position against it, with a middle group declining to 19%.

Race profile of graduates will ask questions of employment equity - 25th November 2009

‘With 40% of all graduates being white, it is absurd to insist that whites make up only 10% of the skilled labour force,’ said Lebone. ‘The Government should perhaps pour its energy into ensuring that all South Africans have a decent education, rather than wasting time on racial bean-counting,’ Lebone added.

SAIRR Today: Empowerment which disempowers - 25th November 2009

Although jobs are the only real answer to poverty, our Government's answer to poverty is not jobs but social grants. Although Jacob Zuma has said that there is ‘something wrong" in the fact that more than 14 million people depend on social grants, he is powerless to stop this other runaway train.

Apart from social grants, the impact of poverty is reduced by the so-called social wage, which includes such things as free housing, water, electricity, healthcare, and education.

This is profoundly disempowering. As Professor Achille Mbembe of Wits wrote in April 2007, "It risks codifying within the law and in the minds of its beneficiaries the very powerlessness it aims to redress."

Another point was made in January 2006 by Khathu Mamaila in a column in City Press," when he wrote: "The ANC coined the freebie policy when it tried to garner support from voters [but] the unintended consequence was the blunting of individual initiative" and its replacement "with the culture of entitlement."

Race profile of graduates will ask questions of employment equity

Media Contact: Kerwin Lebone
Tel: 011 492 0600/0580
E-mail: klebone@sairr.org.za

The main determining factor in any society contributing to a more loving low birth rate population policy is the role and status of women, and the education they receive, particularly in terms of family planning, population issues, and civil rights issues [Crude Impact & Population Policy Common Sense]

White students accounted for 40% of all degree recipients in 2007. In that year there were some 77 981 degrees awarded by South African universities. Africans made up the majority of degree recipients, with 34 364, or 44.1% of all degree awards. White students had the second-highest number of degree awards.

Some 31 686 white students were awarded a degree in 2007. This equated to 40.6% of all degrees. Indian students accounted for 6 820 degree awards in 2007 (8.7%), while coloured students were awarded 4 944 degrees in that year (6.3%). This is according to the latest South Africa Survey published by the South African Institute of Race Relations.

The majority of degree awards were in business, commerce, and management sciences.
Some 19 141 degrees were awarded in this field. Other popular disciplines included education (9 410 degree awards), health care and health sciences (7 126 degree awards), social sciences (6 493 degree awards), law (4 470 degree awards), and engineering and engineering technology (4 389 degree awards).

The University of South Africa awarded the highest number of bachelors and honours
degrees. The institution awarded some 8 765 bachelors and honours degrees in 2007. The University of Pretoria awarded the highest number of masters and doctoral degrees. Some 1 265 masters and doctoral degrees were awarded by the university in 2007. The universities of Stellenbosch and the Witwatersrand were the only other two universities to award more than 1 000 masters and doctoral degrees in 2007. Mangosuthu University of Technology had the lowest output of any university in the country. The institution awarded 56 bachelors and honours degrees in 2007, and no masters or doctoral degrees.

The racial profile of graduates will probably need to be taken into account by the Government when assessing affirmative action policies, said an Institute researcher, Mr Kerwin Lebone.

‘With 40% of all graduates being white, it is absurd to insist that whites make up only 10% of the skilled labour force,’ said Lebone. ‘The Government should perhaps pour its energy into ensuring that all South Africans have a decent education, rather than wasting time on racial bean-counting,’ Lebone added.

Source: SA Inst. Race Relations (SAIRR) (PDF)



SAIRR Today: Empowerment which disempowers - 25th November 2009

** “Unless family planning is more successful in poor countries, they won’t be able to overcome poverty.”- UN Population Fund ** 19 out of every 20 babies born every day, are born in the Third World ** For every three years of education that a woman receives, she has one less child ** [Pregnant (Again) and Poor || CIA & Pentagon's Perspective on Overpopulation & Resource Wars]

John Kane-Berman delivered the following address to the Solidarity trade union in Pretoria, for their series of racial discrimination court cases.

I wish Solidarity every success in its current series of court cases against the new racial discrimination being practised in this country. But I want also to step back from that to look more broadly at affirmative action both in the form of employment equity and in the form of black economic empowerment (BEE). In the long run it will do more damage to its supposed beneficiaries than to whites.

About 10 years ago the Institute hosted a panel discussion about affirmative action. One speaker was Temba Nolutshungu of the Free Market Foundation. He, like the Institute, was one of the few critics of the Employment Equity Act of 1998.

Mr Nolutshungu predicted that the main beneficiaries of affirmative action would be whites. Formerly protected white youth who found that the Act limited their job prospects would be forced to turn to the technical trades or become entrepreneurs. Young blacks, on the other hand, would be channelled into "low-risk soft option" positions. This would reinforce white dominance and blunt the entrepreneurial spirit among young blacks.

Another factor undermining black entrepreneurship relative to white is that so many blacks have been absorbed into the public service. Whites displaced to make way for them have been forced to set up their own businesses. Professor Lawrie Schlemmer, a vice president of the Institute, observed in April 2007 that the number of small businesses owned by whites had increased very rapidly because of the exodus from the public service.

One of the perverse consequences of affirmative action policies is that blacks are poached. Whites not constantly headhunted are able to build up a track record of experience in particular firms whereas blacks frequently on the move are not. This must count against blacks in the job market.

To quote Tito Mboweni when he was still at the South African Reserve Bank, "I have sought to recruit many competent black people, and no sooner have we recruited and trained them than they leave... I am stopping this recruitment of black people. I am okay with my Afrikaners. They stay and do the work, and become experts."

Turning to BEE, Moeletsi Mbeki has pointed out that "when a listed company whose shareholders include the black workers' pension funds gives 10% of its shares to the black politicians, it is redistributing the wealth of the black worker...to the politicians." The same applies to white workers whose pension funds are used to enrich the politicians to whom Mbeki refers.

Another objection to BEE is that it is more about white than about black achievement. White-owned companies are given ratings for doing things for blacks. BEE empowers white firms to get contracts from the black government.

Brian Molefe, CEO of the Public Investment Corporation, complained in August 2007 that whites were not doing enough to develop black talent. But how much are blacks doing to develop black talent? A recent applicant for appointment to the Bench, who happened to be black, pointed out that Jacob Zuma used white not black senior counsel. The new chief justice rebuked her for being disrespectful.

Given its record in education, the Government is not doing much to develop black talent. Nor is "transformation" doing much. This is because the focus is on making white companies harness blacks, rather than on creating new black or non-racial institutions. Gaby Magomola, who at one time headed the African Bank, said a year ago: "We have to move away from the notion of acquiring minority equity stakes as black people in established companies. We have to look at creating our own businesses from ground zero."

It is sometimes suggested that BEE requirements are not very different from the policies used by Afrikaners to build up their economic power. But there is a difference: in the 1930s the savings of tens of thousands of individual Afrikaners were mobilised to start financial institutions.

Why have the savings of the burgeoning black middle class not been similarly mobilised to create black financial institutions? What has happened instead is that BEE requirements have caused a growing proportion of these savings to be deposited into the big four established commercial banks, helping them to obtain relevant ratings in terms of BEE charters and codes.

Moeletsi Mbeki adds that BEE "strikes a fatal blow against the emergence of black entrepreneurship by creating a small class of unproductive but wealthy black crony capitalists [who] do not envisage themselves as entrepreneurs who can initiate and manage new businesses... This is the most striking difference between the black elite of South Africa and the elites of Asia, where the driving ideology is entrepreneurship."

BEE is now a runaway train as codes and charters and additions thereto roll off the presses. And the demand for more of them seems to escalate daily. "The property industry is still lily-white," somebody once complained. Well, the real way to change that is surely to go into business in competition. But the culture of transformation inhibits this.

Yet another objection to BEE is that its requirements have almost certainly deterred foreign direct investment (FDI), in the mining industry in particular. Lower FDI has meant lower rates of economic growth, so BEE has retarded the generation of jobs.

Although jobs are the only real answer to poverty, our Government's answer to poverty is not jobs but social grants. Although Jacob Zuma has said that there is ‘something wrong" in the fact that more than 14 million people depend on social grants, he is powerless to stop this other runaway train.

Apart from social grants, the impact of poverty is reduced by the so-called social wage, which includes such things as free housing, water, electricity, healthcare, and education.

Writing in July 2007, Jovial Rantao, deputy editor of The Star, said: "The message circulating in low-income communities is that if you want anything the Government will provide." He added that what he termed the "so-called delivery protests" had nothing to do with service delivery but everything to do with failure by the Government to provide everything free."

I think it is time to re-configure President Thabo Mbeki's old "two-nations" divide. Instead of rich-and-white versus poor-and-black, we have a growing divide between whites who have been liberated from the false protection of things like job reservation and now have to look after themselves and blacks who are becoming increasingly dependent on the State.

This is profoundly disempowering. As Professor Achille Mbembe of Wits wrote in April 2007, "It risks codifying within the law and in the minds of its beneficiaries the very powerlessness it aims to redress."

Another point was made in January 2006 by Khathu Mamaila in a column in City Press," when he wrote: "The ANC coined the freebie policy when it tried to garner support from voters [but] the unintended consequence was the blunting of individual initiative" and its replacement "with the culture of entitlement."

Some people in the government are worried about this. Writing in September 2009, Vusi Mavimbela, director general in the president's office, said "this culture of seeping entitlement" was what made a young adult buy a new BMW, park it outside his shack, "and then help initiate an anti-government protest demanding free houses".

Entitlement implies victimhood. One can see this at work in the fiasco at Eskom. Jacob Maroga, that company's chief executive, was clearly a poor manager, which led the board to sack him. Presumably affirmative action is what entitled him to the job in the first place and because that is about race and not about competence, lack of managerial ability was not seen by him or the Black Management Forum (BMF) as a reason to fire him. Once a victim, always a victim. Therefore, in the BMF's view, racism was the sole reason the board fired him rather than Bobby Godsell.

The Government refuses to put a sunset clause into affirmative action policies, so this sense of victimhood is passed on to the next generation even though many young people were born after the ANC came to power. Black youngsters accordingly are born into victimhood and the sense of entitlement that goes with it. If they don't particularly feel like victims, presumably their teachers and parents will have to explain to them that they are.

In conclusion, let me say this: the Government's empowerment policies are harmful to race relations, injurious to equality of opportunity, destructive of entrepreneurship, and damaging to the economy. So I hope your court cases all succeed.

At the same time, it is essential to embrace the challenges of entrepreneurship and self-reliance that have been forced upon you.

As Steve Biko might have said, ‘White man, you're on your own.'

- John Kane-Berman

Source: SAIRR

Share