Juventus Daniel Jouberts, an unemployed daily astrologer living under cardboard shelters in central Cape Town, is applying to have himself reclassified as a black man. Jouberts says that this is the only way in which he will stand a chance of finding useful employment that will take him off the streets as a beggar.
Jouberts’s cruel predicament arises from the so-called affirmative action policies of the South African government, which attempt to rectify the criminally biased job reservation policies of the previous apartheid government.
‘Affirmative action,” says embittered Jouberts, ‘is just another form of job reservation and because of it sometimes highly qualified and experienced white people are denied employment on racial grounds. It is the new apartheid.
‘I have applied for several highly desirable positions in daily astrology since losing my job with Independent Newspapers four years ago. On each occasion I have been turned down — including twice by Rooi Rose magazine and three times by Business Day — and have had to watch as black men, and even one coloured lady, were appointed ahead of me. None of these had nearly as good a record as I have.
‘When I was with the Independent group I successfully predicted the fortunes of many famous and well-known people on a daily basis. When Hansie Cronje (a Moon Libran) was about to appear before the King commission, my Cape Times, What the Stars Foretell, column warned Hansie and numerous other Moon Librans that the ‘time was upon them to face up to their past mistakes and make a clean breast of things’.
‘On the occasion of President Thabo Mbeki (a Sinking Aquarian) attending the G8 Summit in 2002 it was my column that encouraged Sinking Aquarians to ‘be forward with your ideas and take advantage of all opportunities to show others the way’.
‘The very same day the well-known Department of Pensions paedophile Darius Beluga (a Sun Sagittarian) was arrested, I had warned all Sun Sagittarians that they should ‘be wary of those who seek to discriminate against your deeply secret love life’.”
Jouberts is particularly bitter when it comes to what he thinks has been the unfair racial discrimination that has caused his downfall. ‘None of the black people appointed ahead of me under affirmative action can claim anything like my success rate as a daily astrologer.”
Jouberts is applying for racial adjustment as was carried out under the old ‘apartheid government”, when many so-called ‘coloured” people applied to be reclassified as white so that they could both escape the horrors of racial discrimination and take up the privileges accorded the previous white minority, such as using reserved lifts, shorter queues at post offices, sitting on park benches of their own choosing and riding at the better ends of trains and buses.
Better work opportunities also came into the picture as did access to living areas reserved for whites under the now-defunct Group Areas Act. These whites also enjoyed the right to vote, denied to coloured people for many years.
In those days applications were made according to terms provided under the also-now-defunct Population Registration Act, which allowed certain ‘borderline” racially classified people to present proof to specially appointed adjudication panels that their bloodline was predominantly white or so-called European.
General appearance, speaking habits, skin colour and other physical attributes were carefully considered by members of the adjudication panels, which invariably included representative clerics from the Dutch Reformed Church.
In his attempts to be reclassified as a black man, Jouberts approached the Department of Home Affairs where his petition was received with sympathy and understanding.
An official of the department confirmed to this paper that a board of racial consultants is in the process of being appointed with a view to setting up a board of adjudicators similar to the one used under the previous government.
Asked whether this would entail the drawing up of new parliamentary legislation, the official said he didn’t think this would be necessary as sections of relevant prevailing legislation made provision for the ‘alteration of citizenship and so forth”.
In his efforts to survive Jouberts is offering daily personal astrology predictions for a small fee. He can be reached at the corner of Bree and Long streets in Cape Town (south-east corner) and carries a cardboard sign with the words ‘Unfairly Unemployed Daily Astrologer Asks For Your Help”.