The youth league of the trade union Solidarity launched a campaign from behind the bars of an animal enclosure at the Pretoria Zoo on Monday to exempt young people from affirmative-action policies.
”We agree with the concept of affirmative action, but the way it is being implemented is incorrect,” said Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans.
Kleynhans said the current method of implementing affirmative action is alienating and discriminatory to South Africa’s white working-class youth, who do not have the money to go overseas to seek better prospects.
He said the government assists young people to study at government schools and universities, but then closes the door to the labour market in their faces.
Kleynhans and four other members of Solidarity youth, Adel Liebenberg, Magdaleen du Plessis, Pieter Burger and Danet Landsberg, remained in the cage for 30 minutes.
He said they were chosen to speak from the inside the enclosure to ”symbolise how locked-in people feel when they try to enter the labour market but cannot find work”.
Solidarity Youth said support for the campaign is not only from the white Afrikaans community.
Kleynhans quoted results from a Markinor survey conducted earlier this year, which found that 47,6% of black respondents agreed that young people entering the job market for the first time should be exempted from affirmative-action policies.
”The Markinor study showed that 63% of South Africans overall, are in agreement with us on this point,” he said.
Solidarity Youth intends to form pressure groups at schools and tertiary institutions and cooperate with organisations such as the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
”We will invite other youth organisations, trade unions and political parties to join us in asking the government to abandon its obstructive affirmative-action policy so that young people are also made to feel at home in the economy,” he said.
Only media representatives were invited to the launch. — Sapa