A political case for affirmative action is easily made. To ensure white dominance in politics, economics and every aspect of South African life, the apartheid regime enacted laws aimed at holding blacks back. Blacks were effectively blocked from assuming positions of authority. Prior to the new dispensation, no amount of merit enabled blacks to advance.
Benignly described, affirmative action is a redress mechanism aimed at ensuring that suitably qualified designated groups (blacks, women and people with disabilities) have equal opportunities to get a job. It is tapping into the talent resident among the historically excluded.
In its current form, affirmative action stands accused of hurting millions of young whites that had little to do with apartheid. An estimated million whites, many with sorely needed skills, have emigrated, exacerbating the country’s skills crisis. White businesses seeking greener pastures aggravate the unemployment problem. Affirmative action is blamed for huge vacancies in the civil service and for the present underperformance. To some, affirmative action is nothing more than a ploy to offer jobs and contracts to the politically connected few. It invariably discriminates against the unskilled and the barely literate black majority, which remains outside the formal job market. Preventing whites from getting jobs has not made a dent in the unemployment rates among blacks.
Affirmative action demands less of blacks and exempts them from expectations, principles and standards of excellence demanded from others. Blacks are spared the rigours of development. To demand them is to ”blame the victims” and cruelly deny the helplessness imposed on them by a heritage of oppression
Some of the perceptions, however, are not supported by reality. Research indicates that Africans continue to be excluded from the benefits of present economic growth. Regarding this, Haroon Bhorat, director of the development policy research unit at the University of Cape Town, says: ”African graduate unemployment rates, higher than those of whites, have also increased faster than all other race groups. What is referred to as a graduate unemployment problem is more accurately then a fast-expanding African graduate unemployment problem.” Also, while young whites may not have been responsible for apartheid, they continue to derive benefits from its dividends, such as better socio-economic status and social and educational capital.
While diversity has introduced excellence in certain areas, it is also true that we are witness to the off-putting forms of affirmative action. As Dr Mamphela Ramphela observed recently, ”there are too many skilled professionals being denied job opportunities at the various levels of government because they are outside of the party political networks that have captured civil service jobs for patronage”.
The most glaring examples involve appointing individuals with dubious scholarly backgrounds to head universities. A vulgar case is a recent appointment of an individual without a single scholarly article. He was chosen over reputable black scholars. Selection committees are places to settle personal and political scores. Such practices have effectively eroded the integrity of the academy.
But these observations and criticisms, while valid, are misplaced. They have diagnosed the problem incorrectly, but also because their expectations of affirmative action are unrealistic. Affirmative action is by definition a limited intervention and could only benefit a few. The shortcomings of affirmative action are inherent in its conceptualisation and implementation.
Secondly, affirmative action is rooted in the compromise entered into during our political transition. The liberation forces were not strong enough to defeat the apartheid regime. Equally, apartheid had become unworkable. Affirmative action would have been unnecessary in a context of a revolutionary victory, which would have extended beyond the political power to control the commanding heights of the economy.
In the context of a stalemate, a win-win solution had to be crafted to appease the contending forces involved in the political struggle. For the liberation forces this translated into ensuring that the notion of redress was part of the reconciliation and reform agenda. Redress provided a sense that blacks have not been short-changed. For the apartheid regime, this reduced to protecting minority rights as a way to allay white fears.
The prominence given to the notion of equality must be understood in the context of both the country’s racial history and the political compromise. Accordingly, the Constitution states that to ”promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken”.
Bereft of any ideas or models, affirmative action was imported from the West. Arguably, this model only makes sense in a context in which the historically disadvantaged are a minority. It has proven to be ill-equipped in a context in which the designated group is a majority.
Provision of free education, bursaries for tertiary and technical skills and free adult basic education for all previously disadvantaged South Africans is the only sustainable broad-based empowerment available. Affirmative action will not benefit the underclass, illiterate and rural poor in the far-flung areas.
Formulated as it stands, affirmative action can only benefit those with the requisite skills to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the new dispensation. The ANC understood this reality. It observed in its Strategy and Tactics of 1997 that ”the formation of a democratic government has also set in motion a rapid process of breaking the glass ceiling that blocked propertied and professional sections of the black community from advancement. At the same time, the policies of government have opened up a wide array of opportunities for small and medium enterprises.”
To neutralise sections of the middle-class black intelligentsia, the group likely not only to benefit immediately from the dispen- sation but also capable of being critical of the possible failures, was invited to the table of victory. Accordingly, the ANC observed: ”Other sections of the black middle strata are also benefiting directly and indirectly from opportunities created by government.
”Indeed, the rapid advance of these sections constitutes one of the most immediate and most visible consequences of democracy. Precisely because their progress is contingent upon the achievement of democracy, these forces continue to share an interest in the success of social transformation. Their interests coincide with those of the other sectors previously denied political rights.”
Affirmative action and black economic empowerment have become convenient instruments/mechanisms to deploy cadres in public institutions and all levers of power. In this regard, struggle credentials took precedence over merit, skills and capabilities. Assumptions of office became a way of rewarding comrades in struggle.
An honest appraisal of affirmative action is required if we are to restore some of the positive aspects.
Professor Sipho Seepe is the rector at Henley Management College. He writes in his personal capacity