ANC'S WORLD OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE NEWSPAPER

No choice but to leave
Andrew Kenny’s column appears in The Citizen every Tuesday.

As the skills shortage in South Africa worsens and the exodus of white artisans, engineers and maths teachers continues, racial affirmative action dominates all job adverts. Suppose you are a highly experienced white technician or project manager. You are looking for a job. In the careers section of a Sunday paper you see an advertisement for vacancies in your field. Then you see the words “employment equity” or “equity plan” or “designated groups” followed by the words, “Should you not receive communication within 2 weeks of the closing date, please accept that your application was unsuccessful.” You can be pretty sure any application from you would go straight into the bin. These words actually seem to mean: “White men need not apply.”

So you had better continue turning the pages of the careers section until you come to job advertisements from Australia or the Middle East. Apply there.

Now consider advertisements not for jobs but customers. Suppose a school was advertising for pupils, and said, “All of our teachers are affirmative action appointees”. How many parents would choose to send their children there?

How many people would choose to be represented in court by affirmative action lawyers? More important, how many poor people in the townships suffering bad water supply and sanitation would choose affirmative action engineers?

The ANC elite calls for affirmative action for the services other people receive but not for the services it receives. The Minister of Education does not send her son to a school where there are affirmative action teachers; she sends him to Bishops, a rich private school with mostly white teachers. Jacob Zuma did not choose an affirmative action lawyer to represent him.

Racial affirmative action is bad for whites and blacks. It is driving skilled whites abroad, demoralising blacks and harming the economy. It does not address the legacy of apartheid; it perpetuates it.

So how should we address our inequalities of the past? Just follow the example of the ANC elite who always choose services for themselves purely on merit. Allow all black parents to emulate the Minister of Education and send their children to the schools they think have the best teachers.