The Afrikaner-based Freedom Front Plus (FF+), which has three members of the South African National Assembly, has handed a memorandum to the office of President Thabo Mbeki protesting at plans to provide continue racial quotas for state learnership programmes that fall under the Department of Labour.
The party has also called for a deadline to be set for the end of affirmative action.
In a statement the FF+ — which is the Freedom Front led by Pieter Mulder and the former apartheid official opposition Conservative Party led by Ferdie Hartzenberg — said its Member of Parliament Pieter Groenewald had handed to the Office of the President at the Union Buildings in Pretoria a memorandum “demanding that the job creation project for the youth should not be based on the grounds of racial quotas”.
“Still exposing the youth after 10 years to racial quotas promotes polarisation and is plain racial discrimination,” said Groenewald, his party’s labour spokesperson. “The government must not act in such a manner that a previously disadvantaged group is replaced by a new future disadvantaged group.”
Groenewald noted that Mbeki had declared that by May next year 72 000 job-seeking youth people would be recruited and trained for the labour market as part of the government’s learnership project.
“The FF+ however takes serious issue with the fact that this project will be based on racial quotas. According to the Department of Labour, 85% of the participants will have to be black.”
Groenewald noted remarks by Prof Jonathan Jansen, education faculty dean at the University of Pretoria, who declared that young Afrikaner men with deep patriotic commitment to South Africa felt imprisoned and due to their frustration resorted to excessive actions.
The MP said Jansen had identified “the root of the problem with his remark that black youth, with a reasonable educational qualification, can look towards the future with a measure of hope and expectation, while at the same time young Afrikaner men with the same qualifications have no such expectations, due to affirmative action”.
“If government’s motive for discrimination on the grounds of race really is to eradicate the injustices of the past, it is quite obvious that this process should terminate at some stage. If government is not prepared to agree to such a cut-off point, nobody could be blamed if it is assumed that government plans to discriminate against white people indefinitely.” — I-Net Bridge