‘Racial quotas are hateful’. So says Sunday Times columnist Stephen Mulholland. I don’t agree. It is an undeniable truth that race and political affiliation rank above ability in the current dispensation. However, Mulholland cunningly equates Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Affirmative Action with Nazism and apartheid. It is devoid of any facts. Woolworths is driving a programme adhering to the country’s labour legislations. It is geared towards addressing the inherent socio-economic inequalities of the past. BEE is not a law that was designated for oppression. Rather, one for balancing the scale. Apartheid had its affirmative action for whites. This one is to redress such imbalances. It could lend itself to abuse by our political demagogues. In some instances it has degenerated to an STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) by some public representatives and the ruling party elites.
Comrade Umshini Wam infamously declared most recently to the DA speaker: ‘..you have more rights because you’re a majority. That’s how democracy works.’ The remark questioned his understanding of constitutional democracy. Again, attempting to bring in another notorious spokesperson in the form of Jimmy Manyi, Mulholland fraudulently attempts to equate the plight of the Coloured people to the economic hegemony of the Jews the world over. Since history has always been written by the victors, there has always been a conspicuous effort to erase Africa in the discourse on civilization. As if it is only the preserve of Europe. Therefore we also owe it to ourselves to change his/herstory to be ourstory.
In the post-1994 dispensation, it is easy for privileged Mulhollands to point fingers at our broken education system, festering hospitals, rape of the defence budget, corrupt tenders and so on, as they remember their formerly legalized racial superiority, despite having lost nothing under the democratically elected regime. It is worth reminding such people that none from the down-trodden South African approves of cronyism, corruption and other shortcomings of the government. The question that begs an answer should be how to review these legislations to benefit all of us equally. Racial quotas, according to his own definition, were not meant to perpetrate crimes against humanity or for genocidal purposes.
As seen in Palestinians at the hands of the Jewish settlers who arrived a couple of decades ago. In contrast, the indigenous South Africans demonstrated their humane side by not chasing Mulholland and such melamin neither challenged nor orchestrated any mass killings against them. This is despite them having colonized us for more than three centuries. Yet you have people like him having the audacity to judge our country against Hitler’s Nazi regime.
*MP Khwezi ka Ceza is a freelance journalist and an independent political economist
