The African National Congress is playing a ”cat and mouse” game with minority groups, and in the process making young people despondent, according to Freedom Front Plus labour spokesperson Willie Spies.
Spies was reacting to media reports quoting ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama as both having said affirmative action and quotas remain ANC policy.
Spies said on Friday that Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota had asserted in Parliament last month that it is not always easy to keep to the government’s ”mathematical requirements” on racial representivity in the defence force.
Lekota had said South Africans should no longer be seen as black, white, coloured, or Indian, but merely as South Africans.
This was followed by Minister of Sports and Recreation Makhenkhesi Stofile’s statement that the days of quotas in South African sport are numbered.
”These contradictory statements create the impression that the ANC is engaged in a ‘cat and mouse’ game, and is not serious about countering the estrangement of minority groups in South Africa,” Spies said in a statement.
The FF+ endeavours to free young people — those who from 1990 went to school for the first time — of the limitations of affirmative action.
According to the FF+, India, the United States and Malaysia have shown that affirmative action has never really succeeded in removing inequalities or promoting economic growth.
Rather, indications are that affirmative action has resulted in greater inequality and especially polarisation in those countries.
After 10 years of democracy it is becoming critical for the authorities to get serious with these realities and take steps to make all South Africans first-class citizens, Spies said. — Sapa