Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota’s views on the difficulties of achieving racial representivity were both welcomed on Wednesday and dismissed as having missed the point.
Lekota told the National Assembly’s defence committee on Tuesday there would have to come a point when South Africans stopped being black, white, Indian and coloured and were merely South Africans.
”When will we cease to be Africans, coloureds, Indians and whites and merely South Africans? This is the question we must ask ourselves,” he said.
Dirk Hermann of the Solidarity trade union welcomed the sentiment, saying neither Lekota nor the union was claiming there was no place for affirmative action. But the time was ripe to ask whether racial quotas to achieve representivity targets were the best way to go about it. Hermann said they were keen to take up the minister’s challenge to debate the matter.
”We’d like to be involved in arranging a national indaba on affirmative action where all points of view can be placed on table.
Currently only representivity is being pursued, which is leading to new forms of imbalance and discrimination. If we are honest, we must stop any new imbalances,” Hermann said.
”We say the result of affirmative action must be to wipe out poverty and unemployment and to rectify racial imbalances. The way to do this is input-based affirmative action through training and development. This must result in economic growth,” he said.
Freedom Front Plus defence spokesperson Pieter Groenewald said Lekota’s views were similar to their own.
”Somewhere there has to be a cut-off,” he said, ”and we’re glad Lekota agrees.”
Groenewald said the SA National Defence Force had been at the forefront of affirmative action in the public service and Lekota’s quotas were almost filled. However, he had problems attracting young whites to the defence force as many felt promotion opportunities were limited.
Democratic Alliance defence spokesperson Rafeek Shah also welcomed ”Lekota’s recognition of the pitfalls of pursuing racial quotas in the SANDF”.
”It is certainly refreshing to have such honest and forthright realism expressed by a minister on this matter. We hope that the sentiments expressed by Minister Lekota during his briefing to Parliament’s ad hoc committee on defence… will filter through to his colleagues in the Cabinet,” he said in a statement afterwards.
Shah said the DA had raised the issue last year when the inspector-general’s report of August 2002 explicitly called for an end to the promotion of white officers of certain ranks. To prevent them leaving the SANDF, they were to be given higher pay than African officers.
The report also recommended that Africans be excluded from entry-level positions, because whites were underrepresented in the lower ranks.
”This is a case of affirmative action being perverted,” Shah said. ”The obsession with demographic representivity, intended to benefit African soldiers, ends up denying them opportunities.”
”No one should be excluded from joining the SANDF or being promoted on the basis of race. [Rather] additional support and training should be provided to people previously excluded to ensure that they are able to seize the opportunities available within the SANDF.”
Lekota told MPS that last year two white pilots flew him to an inter-continental defence meeting.
”When I arrived there I was asked where are the people of your country, ‘Why are you still being flown by these whites?’ It was not a question I was expecting.
”I thought about it and I told them that unlike in their country there are more than 10-million people of pure European stock in our country. They are South African, not settlers from Europe.”
He said more and more the question of representativity was raising this issue of identity.
”We are going to have to look at this and say there are no Indians here, Indians are in India… they are South African. And these people called coloureds… where are they from… they are probably more South African than anybody. It is becoming very difficult this mathematics,” he said.
It was not always easy to adhere to the ”mathematical requirement” set out by Parliament on how the race groups should be represented in the SANDF.
Steven Friedman of the Centre for Policy Studies said redress was a core ANC policy.
”How to do it is a different question altogether,” he added, ” but Lekota is not breaking new ground here. He is not a maverick… many out there enthusiastic about affirmative action redress feel quotas are not the way to go,” Friedman said.
Asked where Lekota’s views came from, Friedman said one could argue he had a genuine administrative headache.
”He has targets to meet but can’t find the folks to make it,” Friedman said.
Another interpretation was that he had reservations about the idea of quotas. Friedman said Lekota, the ANC’s national chairperson, was not part of President Thabo Mbeki’s inner circle but he was elected to his position by a two-thirds margin of delegates at the party’s 1997 conference. He was therefore not someone Mbeki could afford to ignore.
Left-wing academic and Anti-Privatisation Forum spokesperson Dale McKinley said the debate was somewhat misplaced.
”Drawing a line won’t make a difference to the majority of people who remain outside the mainstream economy. For that, structural changes are needed to the economy.”
McKinley said affirmative action in the US only managed to create a small black middle class after 30 years. It had completely by-passed the poor.
”Affirmative action policies are only beneficial to those with skills. The majority of South Africa’s poor have no skills and no way of getting into the middle class,” he said.
He added that Lekota’s comments were consistent with the ANC’s black economic empowerment thrust that was seeing the creation of a black middle class for the country but no serious effort to end social exclusion or poverty. – Sapa