AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONTINUED August 27, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in History.Tags: , affirmative action, whites
2 comments
Relax Max asked a few questions in his comment on my recent post on Affirmative Action in South Africa and I am going to try and elaborate a bit more to improve understanding of the system in our country.
It is quite a huge subject to cover in the South African context, therefore I will not do an indepth post, just a few highlights, etc.
First of all, follow this link to go to the SA Labour Department’s website to see their definition of Affirmative Action:
http://www.labour.gov.za/basic_guides/bguide_display.jsp?guide_id=5848&programme_id=2670
Also click on the link on this page to see the “Employment Equity Act”.
In 1998 the following was reported on CNN about SA planning to adopt AA:
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9810/08/safrica.affirmative.action/
We have a huge majority of blacks in SA as everyone is aware, but prior to the ANC’s take over we have had a history of the minority (whites) paying the bulk of the tax revenues collected and a large portion of this was used to uplift the majority (blacks) i.e. schooling, hospitals, etc. There was only so much that could be done with the taxpayers money given the HUGE majority of blacks who were reliant on upliftment!
The whites actually made the blacks too reliant on handouts instead of teaching them to become self sufficient, but imagine the huge task for a minority race to try and help the majority to be educated, uplifted, taught skills, etc. The present Government cannot manage it either, despite all the International aid they received, there just is not enough resources or skills to cope with the upliftment of the multitude of blacks in South Africa.
Also bear in mind what a big gap there was between the two groups, the whites coming from a skilled and educated background from Europe and the blacks from a traditional “African rural” background with no “first world” skills.
Many people believed that the ANC should have rather gone the “class” route as apposed to the “racial” route when they implemented Affirmative Action. Why? Because there were Blacks, Indians and Coloured people who had the skills to TRULY qualify for a skilled job and who would have been able to handle the position well and they should have been given the opportunity to enter this type of job ahead of a white individual. Go to this link to read more about it:
http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2228
The mistake the ANC made was to go the “racial” route! Now we have a enormous problem on our hands and once again they want to blame Apartheid for this instead of admitting that they threw the unskilled blacks into the deep end and said: “Sink or swim!” and of course the majority sank. To try and understand the enormity of the situation and the absolutely rediculous position we are in at present, go to this link:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&click_id=79&art_id=vn20080827060000370C991228&set_id=1
So to answer your question Relax Max:
“No, the goals have not been met (they were not well thought out goals anyway and were set too high to achieve) and although a lot of blacks have moved upward in the employment ranks and are earning huge salaries, they are not efficient or effective in their posts as they were given their positions because of their colour not their skills.”
“The majority of the whites still have a good standard of living compared to the lower “class” black people, but the young white people have to seek employment overseas as they have limited opportunities in South Africa.”
So to conclude, Affirmative Action did not succeed in South Africa and should now be phased out and people should be employed on merit, not colour! There are thousands of vacant positions in government and municipal offices waiting to be filled, therefore if white skilled individuals qualify for the jobs they should be employed urgently!
When the ship is sinking (like we are) then differences should be set aside to save the ship and action should be taken to correct the position.
Popularity: 64% [?]
(Sponsor Link: Rent on Golf Course)
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN SOUTH AFRICA DEBATE TO PHASE OUT August 22, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in News, Uncategorized.Tags: , affirmative action, whites
2 comments
Good news for white South Africans!!!
The ANC has opened the door to a debate on whether a sunset clause should apply to affirmative action, after Kgalema Motlanthe, the new minister in the presidency, announced that the government would consider phasing out the programme. (Ref: The Business Report.)
The affirmative action policy was set in 1998, when labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana piloted the Employment Equity Act through parliament. The act sets targets for companies to meet so that their workforces become demographically representative.
It has been welcomed by the Afrikanerbond as well as by the most strident supporter of the programme, Jimmy Manyi, the employment equity commission chairman and Black Management Forum president.
A clearly pleased Solidarity yesterday said the union had been in talks with ANC president Jacob Zuma and his deputy Motlanthe - both before and after the watershed Polokwane conference last December - to shift the ground on affirmative action. Motlanthe had suggested that a joint ANC-Solidarity task team should discuss the matter, the trade union reported.
The union (Solidarity) argues that a moratorium should be placed on affirmative appointments in scarce and critical positions, and that young people should be exempted.
The Afrikanerbond said that Afrikaners are flowing out of the country while jobs are deliberately kept vacant in all spheres of the government. While Dirk Hermann declared “the end of the Jimmy Manyi era” and a sign of a new willingness of the government to engage, Manyi said Hermann had misinterpreted or misunderstood the issues involved.
Motlanthe had specifically referred to taking into account scientific considerations, noted Manyi. In this context, he pointed out that in top management positions blacks held about 20 percent of the posts - far off the 87 percent target set in terms of equity legislation.
Once the targets for designated groups - women, coloureds, Indians, Africans and the disabled - were met, the need for legislative teeth would fall away, Manyi said.
Thus he had no difficulty with the statement by Motlanthe, who said: “Perhaps if we take an approach in an objective and scientific way, we can then have a way of phasing it [affirmative action] out rather than say, ‘Let’s do away with it.’ You may find that we do away with it prematurely and settle with a problem.”
The time is long overdue to end this type of discrimination, especially to those born after the Apartheid era, why must we lose our young people to overseas destinations when there is such a shortage of engineers, scientists, etc in our country.
Popularity: 67% [?]
(Sponsor Link: Rent on Golf Course)
WHITE POVERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA July 24, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in News.Tags: poor, whites
3 comments
In July 2004 the following was reported “Today 430 000 whites, of a total white population of 4,5-million, are “too poor to live in traditional white areas” and 90 000 “are in a survival struggle”, says Lawrence Schlemmer, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation. Of these, 305 000 are Afrikaans-speaking and 215 000 speak English.”
Since then it has become worse! Jacob Zuma has recently started visiting white “squatter-like” areas in Pretoria and Bethlehem and said: “I am shocked and surprised by what I have seen here. The vast number of black poverty does not mean that we must ignore white poverty, which is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to talk about.”
He said he had seen the same problems facing white residents of the township as he had seen in black squatter camps.
“This is not about politics, it’s about people who are poor, who are in need and want to be helped by government,” he said, quoted by the AFP news agency.
Solidarity deputy secretary general Dirk Herman said the face of poverty in South Africa was changing. “All wealthy South Africans are no longer white and all poor South Africans are no longer black.
“(But) white poverty is silent poverty. It is not politically correct to talk about it, making it probably the only poverty in the world that is politically incorrect,” he claimed.
Many of these white people have skills that can be used in the country, especially the government departments where there are thousands of vacant posts, which cannot be filled by blacks as there is a skills shortage amongst blacks in this field.
I would suggest to Mr Zuma that he asks them to fill in a form listing their skills and previous employment details and I am sure that many of these white people will be employable!
The whites do not need handouts they need jobs, use this source of skills that is left out in the cold and forget the black/white issue, we are now 14 years into the “new” South African, is it not time now?
Popularity: 67% [?]
(Sponsor Link: Rent on Golf Course)
