SA: Time to rethink affirmative action
South Africa confronts a central political dilemma: how to advance redress to deal with historical injustice while simultaneously building a single national cosmopolitan identity. This is the defining element of the national question.
Attempts were made to grapple with this issue at the ANC's national general council meeting in 2005 and the party's policy conference last year, but the outcomes were unsatisfactory on both occasions. The forthcoming conference at Polokwane gives the ruling party another opportunity to tackle the issue -- and it should, because the national question is one of the great dilemmas of our time. It lies at the heart of much of our contemporary debate, including affirmative action, economic policy and skills shortages.
Of all the approaches that have been advanced to address this political dilemma, the most cynical is the colour-blind perspective, which suggests that South Africa has realised an equality of opportunity, and government should not be involved in initiatives that recognise racial differences among citizens. Advocates of this view are hostile to affirmative action and redress, and assume that an equal playing field already exists.
But there is ample evidence to suggest the contrary. Indeed, the discrimination suffered by black people in the past crucially influences their life chances in the present. As a result, not only is there a moral but also a pragmatic and instrumental rationale for affirmative action. Without redress, inequalities will continue to replicate in a racial form, forever holding South Africa hostage to polarised politics of fractiousness and ethnic mobilisation.
What is the solution? Perhaps the best place to start is by focusing on the conceptual foundation of the formal affirmative action programme. This perspective recognises that, though apartheid discriminated differentially on a racial basis, women and citizens with disabilities were also disadvantaged. Affirmative action therefore includes among its beneficiaries Africans, coloureds, Indians, women and citizens with disabilities. But it is on the racial aspects of this redress where the greatest demographic advancement has been made.
The existing affirmative action programme has been subjected to withering criticism from a variety of quarters, including from voices within the ruling party and its alliance partners Cosatu and the SACP. Its current implementation is seen to have three limitations.
First, the redress strategy has implicitly assumed an equal playing field within the black population, which is simply not the case. Inequality among blacks has been rising for nearly two decades. The net effect is that more well-off sections of the black population monopolise the benefits of redress initiatives.
Second, the implementation of redress has in some cases compromised service delivery to the poorest and most marginalised. Note that I have qualified this statement by using the term "implementation", because the legislation on redress is clear that, in the event of "equity" candidates not being found for positions in the public service, it is illegal to deny these to other citizens. Yet anyone familiar with the public service will know that this has become a widespread practice.
Moreover, a range of news reports suggest that positions in the public service are not being filled even though competent white candidates are available. This is because key performance indicators in the public service are determined in quantitative statistical terms without serious assessment of the availability of equity candidates on the market. Managers in the public service are conditioned not to fill positions rather than compromise diversity proportions. The result is that in sector after sector, service delivery is severely compromised with the consequences played out in the poorest communities.
Finally, the implementation of redress has had the unintended effect of heightening racial consciousness and alienating a section of the population. However unfair certain business people, politicians and public officials may deem this to be, the alienation has to be addressed openly, if only because the Constitution commits the nation to the development of a national cosmopolitan identity, and mandates the state to act in ways that facilitate this outcome. A redress mechanism must be developed that can simultaneously tackle historical injustices while enabling the development of a South African identity.
This would need to be established with criteria that do not reinforce society's historical divisions and are compatible with a cross section of citizens' views about what constitutes "fair" and "just". Redress built on such shared principles is necessary so that bonds of social solidarity can be fostered throughout the population.
The most obvious way to do this is to use class as the defining criteria by which to advance redress. This idea is supported by the DA, which conceives of a charity-oriented intervention directed at alleviating poverty. This, however, would not transform the structural features that tend to reproduce racial inequality. Some progressive intellectuals also recommend a class-based affirmative action because they see it as more effective in achieving the Constitution's desired ends.
Yet the class-based affirmative action strategy has two significant weaknesses. First, it implicitly assumes that economic empowerment is the only element required in the affirmation of historically oppressed communities. But is not psychological liberation as essential as economic empowerment? Second, however well implemented, class-based affirmative action will simply not deracialise particular sectors of society.
For example, the deracialisation of corporate ownership will not automatically result from class-based redress. Given the racial profile of poverty, it could deracialise the lower echelons of the class hierarchy, but one cannot assume that it will automatically do so for the upper echelons of the corporate structure. And deracialising this upper echelon of the class hierarchy is as important a moral and strategic imperative as is eroding the correlation between race and poverty.
This suggests that no redress programme founded on a single defining criteria, whether race or class, is likely to succeed in realising all of our constitutional obligations.
South Africa requires an initiative constructed on more nuanced terms, incorporating race and class. This could take two forms, one of which is already under consideration in official circles and being partially implemented. This is a programme with a race-based redress agenda that is heavily qualified by material criteria. An example is the broad-based BEE programme. Under pressure from the ANC branches and the party's alliance partners, the government has been compelled to broaden the benefits of its racially based economic empowerment agenda. Take, for example, the recent sale of MTN shares to black citizens, where a maximum of R50 000 worth of shares could be bought by any one individual. Similarly, the recently announced Sasol black empowerment deal is skewed in favour of its employees. In both cases there is an attempt to broaden the benefits of the economic empowerment to lower-middle and working-class individuals.
An alternative could be a class-based redress agenda supplemented by more specific race-based initiatives. This would primarily be to the benefit of South Africa's poor, who are almost entirely black. In effect, the programme would have the twin effects of deracialising and eroding poverty.
Where objectives such as the deracialisation of corporate ownership are unlikely to be affected by this programme, specific race-based initiatives could be implemented. There is already an example of this in the sector charters, which allocate targets for black ownership, management, skills development and so on. The lever encouraging companies to implement these charters is continued eligibility for government business, procurement and licences for the mining of the nation's national resources. The benefit of this comprehensive redress agenda is the ability to focus limited state resources on poor and marginalised communities, while using government's regulatory powers to condition the private sector to use its resources to deracialise the market economy.
I favour a nuanced, class-defined redress programme, supplemented by race-based initiatives, rather than the race-based programme qualified by class criteria that is now under consideration and partly being implemented. Both could have similar deracialisation, empowerment and poverty alleviation effects. The latter initiative, however, is more vulnerable to reinforcing racial identities, which would be an obstacle to building a non-racial society. The former would help to realise the twin objectives of the Constitution: to effect redress for those who have been historically disadvantaged, while simultaneously building a cosmopolitan, non-racial nation.
