The decision by the Labour Court in Barnard vs SAPS did not come as a surprise. In effect the Court found that the SAPS had unfairly discriminated against Barnard by declining to approve her promotion merely because she happened to be white, despite the fact that she was recommended for such a promotion. What is surprising, perhaps, is that the SAPS lawyers contested the case at all.
Both the Constitutional Court and the Labour Court have already made clear that although affirmative action is constitutionally mandated and sanctioned by the Employment Equity Act, representativity cannot be the only criteria used to decide on the appointment or promotion of an individual. The Employment Equity Act had to be interpreted in the light of the Constitution – especially section 9(2) of the Act which prescribes at least three conditions for a valid affirmative action policy.
As the Constitutional Court found in the case of Minister of Finance v Van Heerden, for an affirmative action plan to be valid there had to be a plan (not random preferential treatment) in which the overwhelming majority of the group targeted for advancement had to consists of individuals who belonged to a group who had suffered from past unfair discrimination.
Second, the measures had to be designed to protect or advance those disadvantaged by past discrimination. This meant that the measures had to be reasonably capable of achieving its goal. If the measures were arbitrary, capricious or displayed naked preference it would not be constitutionally valid.
Third, the measures used had to promote the achievement of equality in the long term. While the achievement of this goal may often come at a price for those who were previously advantaged (in other words, whites), the long-term goal of our society is a non-racial, non-sexist society in which each person will be recognised and treated as a human being of equal worth and dignity. In assessing therefore whether a measure will in the long-term promote equality, it should be asked whether the measures constituted an abuse of power or imposed such substantial and undue harm on those excluded from its benefits that our long-term constitutional goal would be threatened.
The Employment Equity Act reflects this careful balance struck by the Constitutional Court between the important goals of correcting past injustices and challenging inherent pro-white racial bias in appointment and promotion on the one hand, and guaranteeing respect for the human dignity of excluded individuals on the other.
The Act places a positive duty on employers to implement corrective measures but places several limits on the way this could be done.
First, it could not be done through the imposition of rigid employment quotas but rather had to be done by setting (and trying to meet) certain targets for each category of employment. Second, where there were inherent requirements for a job and members from designated groups (blacks women, the disabled) did not meet these requirements, white (often male) applicants who did meet these requirements could be appointed. Lastly, employment policies or practices which had the effect of placing an absolute barrier on the appointment or promotion of white employees would not be allowed.
In the case of Barnard she applied twice for a promotion. Twice she was recommended for the promotion and twice this recommendation was rejected by police management because her appointment would not have advanced the achievement of the race targets for that level of employment in the SAPS. Twice no other appointment was made despite the fact that other ostensibly suitably qualified candidates with far lower scores than Barnard had applied.
It is important to note that the panel which recommended Barnard’s promotion seemed to have been slightly confused. While it found that some black applicants were suitably qualified for the post (but not as qualified as Barnard), they also found that if any of them were appointed “service delivery” would have suffered. This suggests that the other applicants were not really suitably qualified, a view that the National Police Commissioner seemed to have endorsed by failing to appoint any of the other candidates, thus leaving the vacancy unfilled.
The Labour Court found that it was not rational to leave a post unfilled merely because the appointment of suitably qualified white candidate would not have advanced the employment equity goals of the employer. Where service delivery would suffer if the black applicant was appointed over a more qualified white one the white candidate had to be promoted. As I read the judgment, the question was really whether there were suitably qualified black candidates to appoint. In this case there were none because the appointment of any of the black candidates would have impacted negatively on service delivery, so the post was left vacant rather than appoint the white candidate. This was impermissible.
If a suitably qualified black candidate had applied (in that his or her appointment would not have negatively affected service delivery) it would have been perfectly legal to appoint that black candidate over the white candidate – even where the selection panel thought the white candidate was the best candidate for the job.
The judgment therefore has an important but limited effect on the way in which the application of affirmative action should be understood. It does not constitute a rejection of affirmative action, but merely confirms, first, that an unqualified black candidate could not be appointed above a qualified white candidate, and second, that a white candidate could not be denied appointment merely because no suitable black candidate applied for the job.
In my view the judgment therefore strikes the correct balance between the need for affirmative action, on the one hand, and the need for effective service delivery on the other. “Merit” (however one might define this nebulous concept) must play a role, but it must not play the only role when appointing or promoting members of the civil service or police. Race must also play a role, but it cannot play the only role when appointing or promoting members of the civil service or police.
The problem with affirmative action is that these rules are often ignored when affirmative action is used as a smoke-screen to hide nepotistic or corrupt appointments of friends and family members who are not qualified for a job. It’s the employment equivalent of Julius Malema’s company obtaining R140 million worth of tenders in Limpopo despite not having any obvious qualifications to deliver the work contracted for. Opponents of affirmative action point to such cases to challenge the correctness of applying affirmative action at all. In this they are wrong.
Is Juju becoming the new Judge Hlophe/JZ of PdV’s columns. Thinks: ‘Must make sure to slip in a reference to JM before the end of this post.’
Maybe we should all heed Pieter Dirk Uys’s advice, but I think everyone would be hard pressed to keep quiet on that subject.
Hi Pierre,
Your use of the word ‘qualified’ suggests it is a clear-cut (black and white if you will!) term and a person is either qualified or not for a particular role.
This may be the case for many menial roles, but for roles of any substance or responsibility, qualification is not something that can be identified on someones CV. Here, an interview process will inevitably result in a favoured candidate (and from my experience, this is often pretty clear cut.)
So to choose any person apart from this favoured candidate does impact ‘service delivery’.
As such, affirmative action in its above described form works well in the blue collar sphere which is unfortunately already the domain of the previously disadvantaged.
For affirmative action to be effective at senior levels, we either need to increase the number of skilled managers coming through, or be satisfied in a reduction in ‘service delivery’ depending on what is more important to the country.
An element of affirmative action which is discussed too little is the link between its success and its demographic base. Affirmative action was used incredibly successfully in the mines by the Afrikaners in the early part of the 19th century. This was because they were a minority on the mines and therefore to lift their status was relatively easy against a larger black work force. Affirmative action in SA today often gets accused of not being ‘broad based’ enough and only benefitting the BEE magnates. The reality is that affirmative action, when replacing a minority (whites) is far less effective than the reversal.
Any meaningful increase in black jobs where whites are replaced would (in % terms) have a relatively small impact on black employment and a catastrophic impact on white employment. Acceptable? I actually don’t know, but the implication would be a significant and rapid export of skill.
Sorry … thats 20th century!!
This is one of those instances where black people in leadership fail to take advantage of the legislation and advance the plight of juniors in their organisation. I do not believe that appointing someone with 17 % less score would have compromised the SAPS. If SAPS can survive with leaders such as Tim Williams , Selebi etc why a junior with potential cannot be given exposure, training and support to assume the role.
Similarly this weekend on Sunday Papers, a black female who is an acting chairperson of Commission on Employ Equity is also an HR Director at Alex Forbes confessed that her company is being investigated for not reporting appropriately. I just could not belive that the very person who is charged with overseeing submissions to CEE is not meeting the standards.
Prof, this is not even a case worth discussing. The issues raised in this case had long been decided by our court. The SAPS dropped the ball and discriminated against Barnard.
If management in both public and private sector get proper advice and follow it, we should not be having discrimination offences that have been decided before.
Whites often forget that after the discovery of diamonds in Kimberly in the 1870s, discrimination laws were passed to protect whit men from black competition in both labour and ownership of diamond claims. Systematically, the black men was excluded to competing fairly with white men through out the industrialisation of SA.
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=011585033642329380267%3Aj6q_afajhci&ie=UTF-8&q=mpho%20nkeli&sa=Search
Link to the article
I clearly do not understand the Employment Equity Act; as I understood it, it was to redress the inbalances of the past. Three distinct groups are identified as ‘previously disadvantaged’, namely race, gender, and disability. So surely Barnard would qualify anyway?? How many senior female police officials did the previous system have??
So in other word, according to the police, service delivery suffers less if the vacancy is not filled than if it were filled by a black person.
Makes perfect sense.
I see there was a directive to the Affirmative Action Council by the ANC today or yesterday to speed up the process… just what will they come up with now?
Prof: “Merit” (however one might define this nebulous concept)…”
Surely ‘merit’ is one of the easiest qualities to discern, so I don’t agree with your descriptive that it is nebulous.
AA is and will always be institutionalised racism. It promotes racism whilst demoting equality. There are no requirements set on the intended beneficiaries of this system and the result is quite clear in a myriad of facets of our dear society. The schooling system is purposefully degraded thus flushing the market with new waves of unqualified beneficiaries year after year. The system, in typical South African fashion, is based on punishment instead of incentive. This beloved system and all its bastard children are ineffective and you must be ANC leadership material if you believe that it will ever work. Hopefully this system will collapse before the economy does.
@ Charles
AA is and will always be institutionalised racism. It promotes racism whilst demoting equality.
Wow when was this equality achieved?
Gwebecimele,
Equality has not been achieved I’ll grant you that.
But I would put it to you it really depend what you mean by equality? Because not even in the USSR was everybody equal (but some more equal than others).
If you mean equality before the law, I would say that was achieved on 27 April 1994.
If you mean equal access to opportunity (Education, Healthcare etc.)?
I would say that would be achieved the day the ANC loses a general election. But seeing as they will rule until Jesus comes, we might be in for a couple of millennia of misrule and corruption.
@ George
Lets just vote out ANC then our problems will be solved. C’mon
I guess AWB or IFP will do a better job.
it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do a better job than the ANC.
@John Roberts.
LOL!
good article by prof, well balanced, cannot complain, keep it up prof
Pierre, you admit that “merit” is a nebulous concept. Yet, at the end of the day, you sanction the invoking of that very concept to justify giving a job to a white (Afrikaner), woman. If government were to allocate sufficient resources to on-the-job training, there is no reason any black person could not quickly learn to do Barnard’s job.
The inherently indeterminate, constested, open-ended, contested, indefinable, ineffable, imperialist discourse of “merit” (or, to use the liberal euphemisms, “competence,” “experience,” “ability”), are used as an excuse to stop transformation in its tracks.
I demand that this decision be reversed on appeal!
coulour before equality , redress before address , positive discrimination?
Affirmative action began in the USA as a tool to address the persisting inequalities for African Americans in the 1960s. it was officially introduced by kennedy.
In an ideal world the only thing that we should be considering is an applicants ability to do the job, but thats the ideal world reverse racism in the employment equity sector in the USA has largle fallen short due to corporate America! The very idea of a white man kissing a black woman on American TV in the late 80`s, so worried the network produces that they made sure that the storyline made it show that it was done under duress.
Segregation and discrimination may have been championed on the face of it, but it is practiced silently and politely in every element of American society. We have to ask why? they have a Black President now netwrk studio`s , the film indusrty & Oprah won the election!! yet AA has largely failed? why?
Because America boasts a Majority White populace>> that will take precedence over any AA policies , redress , coulour before equality.
Affirmative action was created In the USA as a way for the dominant culture to make amends for the years of official discrimination,there is rampant racism in the USA It is just more subtle & unregulated as was in the 1960`s.
My point ?
AA action in SA is the way of a Minority culture to make amends for years of official discrimination> problem is in SA the majority in SA represents a ppl who are not equipped with the necessary skills to do the job, as a result the situation has pretty much ruined itself BEE & AA has failed most South Africans by creating a small group of black elitist capitalists?? made up of ANC politicians, who have driven the market into the hands of a few (no growth for black entrepreneurs) . The Roots(pardon pun) of the problems experienced by the majority in this country will have to start at the beginning yet again >>
Meritocracy , opportunities and advantages to people on the basis of their ability. Skin coulour is no longer the issue simply because the majority in SA are Black?isolated judgments in favor of white employees is hardly the entire SA in jeopardy of “white rule” & AA by the wayside?
education and the importance thereof is the key <>& those that have been taught need to be regulated!!! The majority in SA will remain the majority forever, i don’t see a baby boom among the minority Populace to tip scales they are far to busy working to have 20 kids per family?
We do not live in an ideal world here down south>>
Prof de Vos – Good article. It is not AA in itself that is wrong, it is the way that AA is (almost generally) applied in the public service that is wrong. And this gives rise to the bias referred to in your closing sentences:
“Opponents of affirmative action point to such cases to challenge the correctness of applying affirmative action at all. In this they are wrong.”
Did you read the article that I’ve linked under the Zapiro cartoon on Malema’s fear of the forces of darkness below? (The one which says that many – or is that most, or all – of the bridges contracted to Malema’s coy under nepotistically awarded contract have collapsed during the last rainy season. That is a clear indication of how AA (or BEE) should not be done. Can someone please educate the guys in top positions, especially in the public service, on how these things should be done, to be fair?
Anonymouse says:
March 2, 2010 at 10:46 am
“most, or all – of the bridges contracted to Malema’s coy under nepotistically awarded contract have collapsed during the last rainy season”
An engineering Professor once commented that “engineering students need 50% to qualify, so expect one in two bridges to collapse”.
How many percent is “G”?
Pierre, a reasonable person would agree that “achievement of equality in the long term” is desirable. The problem seems to be that you conflate equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. The first, in a “non-racial, non-sexist society” is a sine qua non. The second entails social engineering, an obsession with demographic or ethnic representivity and blatant racial discrimination against a minority group. This negates any notion of striving for a society free of discrimination. To harp on about the so-called injustices of the past – a convenient catch-all to justify further racial discrimination, is sophistry of a fairly low order. Despite repeated efforts of numerous commentators, including myself, to help you focus and come with reasoned commentary, you appear to be backsliding into an ANC-like mindset. Perhaps you will come to your senses when you are suddenly and arbitrarily ousted from what appears to be a fairly cushy job and replaced by someone whose only appropriateness for the position is that they are blacker than you and have stronger political connections with the current ruling order. I wonder if you would deem this to be in accord with our professed non-racist, non-sexist democracy? The only determinant of suitability for a job can only ever be the “nebulous concept” of merit. Affirmative action is a euphemism. Call it by its correct name – racial discrimination.
Perhaps you should have concentrated on your initial pertinent observation about the cheek of the police in contesting this in the first instance.
The allegations about badly constructed structures in Limpopo is a racist diversion. Why does no one ask about all the buildings that failed in Santiago – built by white engineers? And speaking of collapsing bridges, who got the tender to perform Madam Zille’s catastrophic plastic surgery?
Graham, you appear not to have caught on that we live in a post-modern world. Every fact is contestable; all values are political; all truths are relative. The very force of gravity, which once was thought to destroy badly built bridges (viz, those erected by engineers who lacked “merit”), has itself been revealed to be just a “social construct”
It follow from this that all “merit” itself is purely synthetic or at least, as Pierre says, “nebuous.”
I hope you can follow this, Graham.
G = 30%
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 2, 2010 at 14:48 pm
“The very force of gravity … has itself been revealed to be just a “social construct”
Hahahaha – nice one Dworky.
And “dark matter” is a fearsome thing too!
Not really, Dworky.
By the way, buildings supposedly built by white engineers in Chile may well have failed – but it took an 8.8 Richter quake – one of the most powerful in about 100 years to achieve this. Here a mere rainstorm suffices.
I wonder what your real name is?
Chris says:
March 2, 2010 at 14:50 pm
So what is GG? And that in Woodwork (carpentry)! For crying out loud, how can such a guy (like all young people he knows – LOL!) ever be a Director of an engineering company?! I tend to agree with Pieter-Dirk Uys, we are giving this guy too much publicity – thereby making him a much more important politician than any of his ANC elders.
@ Graham
Good try, I hope your analysis is not influenced by some replacement by a darker skin fellow.
Your argument and other views that suggest voting out ANC as a solution for all our problems in South Africa are very suprising and makes one wonder how sincere are these views in bringing solutions to the table. All the suffering and new found freedom for black people really means nothing to people like yourself and all you want to see is all of us moving forward with a false sense of hope for freedom and equality for our people. As if it is not enough to surbotage and confuse the public in blogs, talkshows etc you only see the black guy as politically connected and incompetent. I suspect you one of those who think John Smith is the coach of the Springboks or Phutuma Nhleko has a white guy running MTN.
Graham, for whites to be where they are, the had affirmative action back in the diamods discoveries in Kimberly. Whites realised that they could not compete with black majority in diamond claims, so the lobbied for a legislation to prohibit blacks from owning and trading in diamond claims. That was discrimination which basically curtailed black people’s freedom of contracting.
Secondly, white labourers were facing fierce competition from black labourers. They again had a legislation that discriminated against black so that white labourers could had no competition from black and that kept white wages higher than black wages.
This continued and was intende to the Witwatersrand after gold discovery there. Apartheid then intensified this in education and spatial planning.
So with more than 100 years of discrimination against black and in favour of whites, you have a nerve to claim AA is discrimination when in fact it is removing barriers that held back our people for so long.
PLEASE DO NOT BE SO STUPID!
Graham, either you have read the article too fast and missed things or you are a bit slow. Let me assist. First, I am quoting the judgment of the Constitutional Court interpreting the provisions of section 9(2) when I talk about the achievement of equality in the long term. I assume you missed this. Second, your distinction between equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome is completely misplaced. Our law does not endorse (nor could it ever) equality of outcome. Neither do I. I do endorse the CC’s view that equality requires that steps be taken to move closer to equality of opportunity – something that we do not have at present (and may not have for a very long time or perhaps ever). Because of the fact that our forefathers stole the land from the indigenous population, imposed poll taxes on black South Africans, denied them opportunities to get educated, discriminated against them on every possible level and exploited black labour to allow us to get our educations and amass our wealth, very few black South Africans today enjoy the same opportunities to prosper than does the vast majority of their white counterparts. It is like saying that if one allowed the white athlete to train for two years in the most luxurious circumstances while locking up the black athlete in prison for that period, one would provide equal opportunities for the white and black athlete to win the race if only one releases the black athlete from his prison cell. That is, on its face, an absurd and untenable argument. Affirmative action is aimed at least partly at creating an environment in which the competition would become a bit fairer than it is now. You say it would be extremely unfair to give the black athlete a few meters head start in the race because it would discriminate against the white athlete because they would both have equal opportunity to win the race. Yeah right.
Pierre, as lawyer, I expect a better standard of argument and reasoning from you. If my views were manifestly flawed, which does not seem to be the case, as a laymen I at least would have some sort of defence. Your argument in fact supports mine. Just because your great grandfather may have misbehaved, this cannot be extrapolated to all whites somehow having been advantaged by this. You are forced to resort to sweeping generalisations to justify your specious arguments. My forefathers did not steal any land or do any of the beastly things you claim. Even if this were true, the slate is wiped clean with every generation and trying to create a nexus between bad behaviour of centuries ago and active racial discrimination now, is really clutching at straws. I know of no current legal or social impediment restricting anyone from engaging in any endeavour they choose – except of course the pernicious practice of actively discriminating against white males – aka affirmative action. This policy is an active racist intervention designed to socially engineer equality of outcome. So it is you who is wrong. I hardly think your reference to the constitutional court, which has a cavalier history of trashing centuries of jurisprudence, enhances your case at all. So there is more than equality of opportunity if you are not a white male, not the reverse as you aver.
In any event, affirmative action was a failed experiment in the USA to assist a minority. Since when does a majority, which holds all the political power, need to be affirmed? This is preposterous. I have to assume that your weasel-worded defence of the indefensible must have something to do with not offending the powers that be in academia in the Western Cape. Otherwise you should be ashamed of propounding such ludicrous views.
No amount of sophistry or reference to putative misbehaviour of ancestors from a bygone era can ever be a defence for, or justify racial discrimination as practised now. This is exactly what Hitler said to justify his racial and anti-semitic laws of the 1930s.
@ Joe Public the same views apply. I cannot see any nexus between the behaviour of some white ruffian miners from 1870 and writing racially discriminatory statutes now. Stupidity on my part does not come into it. Speak for yourself.
Ehud Olmert: The first black-white kiss on US TV was on Star Trek between Kirk and Uhuru, and it wasn’t under duress , and yes it caused a stink, and I believe it was the early 80′s, not late. I watched it live (well previously recorded), never missing a show; its a cult thing.
Affirmative action was also put in place as early as the US in Canada, not sure who was first. I know, lost a job due to it while working with aboriginal Indians, Canadian Indians. Poor old white boy came last after Indians, minorities (of which Canada has many) women, and recent graduates entering the market. Was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Once I was being driven by an Indian women to a meeting. Without warning she crossed three traffic lines for an exit causing traffic turmoil and near accidents. I was aghast. She said: “don’t worry, I’m not only an Indian, I’m a woman”. cheers.
Pierre,
Interesting analogy.
However, assuming there are a fixed number of jobs in the economy, for every metre head start you give the black, you will have to send the white guy back a metre.
Then, using a simplified population demographic, try and give 9 blacks on the starting line up a metre head start and see where the 1 white ends up …
If employment (& unemployment) in South Africa is equally distributed amongst race in SA, then many (skilled) whites will need to be rendered unemployed. Simple end result: They will leave. This is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether you support ZANU or MDC.
Anonymouse: Interesting! In my experience AA represents Alcoholics Anonymous. Good to see you commenting again.
Graham: good arguments. I never once in Canada felt guilty for my Canadian and American forefathers and their apartheid policies for Indians, yet I knew the people needed help. Affirmative Action needs to be balanced with merit, the middle path so to speak. Without the balance it will never work, as the ramifications cause as great and many problems as the failure to address it; sort of a catch 22.
We need to be thinking on our toes, and that’s not yet happening.
Graham, you miss the point. Affirmative action is not about punishing anyone for misbehaving. It is about correcting the effects of past discrimination. Whether your grandfather stole land or not is utterly irrelevant. As a white person you benefited from a system of structured and systematic racial oppression which fundamentally disadvantaged black South Africans IN ORDER to secure an advantage for whites living in South Africa – whether you voted for the National Party, die PFP or was a UDF member. But that is neither here nor there. The fact is that the system was deeply unfair and it resulted in an unacceptable and unfair distribution of wealth and opportunities to whites. One could argue that one does not care about this, which is fair enough, but would open oneself up to allegations of being heartless, unethical and deeply selfish. Or one could argue that one does care about injustice but that affirmative action is not a legitimate tool to help address it. This, from an ethical standpoint, is a more tenable argument but one would then have to say what would address the injustice and what one would be prepared to do to help with addressing it or face charges of rank hypocrisy. But even if one is not ethical at all, self preservation seems to me to require that we should take steps to address the effects of past injustice – or immigrate to the USA where the majority can continue to exploit undocumented immigrants at will to help sustain their lifestyles and not worry about the effects this might have on the political stability of the country. We, on the other hand, do not have the luxury of being heartless and immoral.
Pierre, your last note is more reasoned and I endorse an ethos of charity, goodwill and upliftment. Yet, to try and enforce this by racially discriminatory statute or policy is, I repeat again, indefensible, no matter how you try and spin it.
My original point remains; to actively discriminate against one small group, ie. the white male, and by extension, lump onto him the blame for past wrongs from past eras, is not only racist and sexist, but will not achieve the claimed outcomes and noble motives one is presumably striving for. You don’t uplift people by grinding down others. This type of discrimination amounts to a kind of small-minded vindictiveness against a minority of a minority. We have a history of always trying to make scapegoats. This alienation of an important sector of society can never have any long-term benefits.
You are still persisting with the myth that rotten behaviour automatically and inevitably benefited descendents several generations down the line and they must somehow be made to atone. If this had any substance, why are only white males being targeted?
Prof: I do understand most of what you are saying; however, it feels to me partially imbalanced: Graham’s argument is reasonable. However, there is no doubt, injustices need to be addressed, but should we be incapacitated by them? Two wrongs do not make a right, or for that matter make our situation beneficial to all or the country’s future.
I do not, and many south africans, regardless of whether they benefited as children from their privilege, or benefit today from the injustices of the past, believe that they should be punished for apartheid. 1) the present young white generation is not responsible for the sins of their fathers, 2) to think that they are is to deny them and the country their talents and their love for South Africa. Why should they have to be persecuted by hate, denied, or leave?
My experience of young, modern (educated) white youth is that they are not that damaged by the old regime; the educated (or being educated) are amazingly understanding, tolerant, and very much into the global world and all it offers, at least those who I have had the privilege of knowing. I sometimes feel they are more liberal and tolerant than myself.
We cannot limit their skills and abilities, or their love for south africa, nor should they by black reactionaries be denied activation of their skills or potential input. There must be a meeting ground. And right now such a meeting ground is not existent or seriously threatened.
Can you imagine if JM was a non racist, a man committed to working on behalf of all youth, non racial (rather than on accumulating wealth and trying to follow the big men of Africa), instead supporting youth matters, sports, arts, education for all.
You and I have no need for guilt being white, privileged, wealthy. Its enough that you speak on behalf of the law and the equality of rights for all. We need to give up the past and live in the present, promoting a future brilliant for us all.
Pierre, as usual, you make good arguments, the best of which is pragmatic — that irrespective of all ethical considerations, the perceived legitimacy of the post-apartheid political order is dependent upon black economic advancement more accelerated than the market would afffod.
But you hurt your case, and play into Graham’s hands, by claiming that “merit” is “nebulous.” That may be so in fields like public relations and sports commentary. But in fields that really matter, like sanitary engineering. for example, there is nothing that “nebulous” in the difference between a “good” plumber and and “a bad” plumber.
The implication of post-modern relativism about “merit”is a denial that, in some cases, the price of affirmative action is going to be impeded service delivery. Can’t we all be grown-up enough to admit this now?
Michael Osborne says:
March 2, 2010 at 20:31 pm
“But in fields that really matter, like sanitary engineering. for example, there is nothing that “nebulous” in the difference between a “good” plumber and and “a bad” plumber.”
Often the difference between a “good” plumber and a “bad” plumber is the quality of the PR.
Be that as it may, how come the contestation is only for higher level jobs? I have not come across complaints at the level of labourers, cleaners and the like.
@ Maggs
“Often the difference between a “good” plumber and a “bad” plumber is the quality of the PR.”
You are a genius, Maggs.
Michael Osborne says:
March 2, 2010 at 21:58 pm
Hey Michael – thanks for your kind words and acknowledgment.
Many would disagree with us.
To dismiss the cynics we could point to the international economic collapse resulting in the main from the “best of the best” from the world’s best rated universities – the impact is more profound than anything that our “bad plumbers” could ever dream about.
We could argue that the straight As from Harvard may well have worse impact on a macro-economic scale than a G from a Limpopo school.
We could add to that the Iraq war that was based on intelligence from international agencies that are staffed by “only the best” – it is well known how wrong that intelligence was.
To strengthen our argument that PR influences the perception of “competence”, we could point to people like Madoff and Tannebaum whose criminality was PRed as almost Godlike greatness.
A much better approach would be to suggest that they are conflating competence with bad behaviour (laziness, greed, selfishness, criminality and the like).
Most of all you and I know that all this is about resistance to transformation of our society, through all kinds of crude and erudite euphemisms because it rocks the foundations of the sense of entitlement that has built through generations of systemic racism – it’s compounded by often well meaning people being “so close to the woods that they cannot see the trees”.
Maggs true ! often the PR (& tenders) (competition) is the difference,
saw a vehicle on the road yesterday, sewerage cleaners>>>
” Your Shit Is My Bread & Butter”
(K@K WP)
Maggs is right.
Last time I chose a tradesman to work on my flat, I did so by throwing darts randomly at the classified pages of the neswpapers.
I would never dream of asking for recommendations from friends, on the naive, modernist assumption that one plumber might “do a better job” than another.
(My selection technique is, of course, based upon my close study of Foucault, Derrida and Frederic Jameson.)
How do you create a society free of discrimination? By more racial discrimination?
That is a logical inconsistency. Oxymoronic.
neswpapers = The Citizen
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 9:06 am
“I would never dream of asking for recommendations from friends, on the naive, modernist assumption that one plumber might “do a better job” than another.”
That goes to the heart of the challenge we face.
Friends want to recommend their friends to retain positions of influence for their friends all disguised as rational arguments as to why the status quo should be retained.
Brett Nortje says:
March 3, 2010 at 9:07 am
“How do you create a society free of discrimination?”
By everyone putting their shoulder to the wheel, engaging the challenges, embracing the need to transform and actively contributing to change – not by resisting it.
I heard a rumour that, when Pierre interviewed for his UCT post, the selection committee made him furious by demanding that he submit a list of his publications up front. He adamantly refused to do so. Pierre argued — correctly in my view — that evaluation of his writings by the committee was premised on the reactionary notion that “merit” had any determinate meaning. This being a myth that Pierre had devoted his academic career to refuting, he was naturally not willing to play along with.
Not many people are aware that Pierre’s selection for the job was ultimately made by lot from amongst all who had applied!
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 9:40 am
“Not many people are aware that Pierre’s selection for the job was ultimately made by lot from amongst all who had applied!”
The rumour mill has it wrong.
I suspect that the references are to another university, in another province, related to another “professor” who claimed post graduate degrees that did not exist.
But all’s well that ends well – he “retired” and the problem went away.
Quietly of course – he was not Black!
Maggs I can only applaud you magnificent consistency.
Not many people are willing to put up with flooded basements to vindicate their principled conviction that all plumbers are created equal.
You are indeed a shining example!
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 10:09 am
Ouch!
Some raw nerves touched eh Dworky.
Don’t take it personally, racism affected us all.
Maggs, ‘guilt by association’, ‘blame the victim’ are not mere, unfortunate, collateral damage.
Those tactics are morally indefensible.
The ANC has already had to vacate the moral high ground because a quarter of the population is HIV-infected, a quarter of a million people have been murdered (with the overwhelming majority of bereaved families not having the consolation and closure of a perpetrator quickly tried, convicted and locked up) and governance and service delivery (and our infrastructure, including bridges) is collapsing. All thanks to the ANC.
Every week now, there are violent, destructive service delivery protests. And you think that is not an indictment of ANC rule?
Where does it have to end, buddy, before it is common cause: ‘The ANC is morally bankrupt’?
In the big-people world, actions have consequences. Good intentions count for little. Grown-ups take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5375264
May be Blacks should also go to New Zealand and Australia at this pace they are going nowhere.
The problem for opponents of affirmative action is twofold. First we have a factual situation (racially skewed distribution of priviledge and opportunities) which as a matter of ethics and of practical politics is untenable and cannot be allowed to continue. Second, we have a legal framework in the form of a Constitution that endorses affirmative action as part of a remedial or substantive notion of equality – as opposed to a merely formal notion that equality which pretends equality is about equal treatment of everyone (something that is in any event not possible) and thus makes it clear that corrective measures based on race is required for the achievment of equality and NOT “reverse discrimination”.
Micheal, you are naughty: you equate my skepticism about ever being able to determine an absolutely neutral and objective notion of “merit” with a nihilistic “everything goes” post-modernism. This is a lazy argument. One can be critical about the way in which “merit” is being deployed to entrech privilege and dominant white values while at the same time acknowledging that some form of “merit” must play a role in the appointment and advancement of individuals. Subjecting the notion of “merit” to critique and asking questions about how “merit” is used to perpetuatye white privilege is not the same as rejecting the fact that certain individuals need to have knowledge of specific things and experience of a specific nature to be able to do specific jobs. I wish to do both: question the mindless incantation of merit which often hides racial and cultural prejudice AND insist that people must be appointed who can actually do what they are hired to do. Mine is not an extreme position – as you suggest. Indeed it is a middle of the road position.
Pierre, with respect, you are much more naughty than I am.
I pointed out that, while in some cases “merit” is indeed “nebulous”, in the case of other job descriptions, it is very concrete indeed. (Plumbing, and cardiac surgery being cases that spring to mind.)
The suggestion that “merit” is universally nebulous is indeed well along the road of post-modern nihilism. (An idea which, by the way, I find intellectually appealing, but practically unworkable.)
Let me ask you this: Do you agree with my ultimate conclusion that “in some cases, the price of affirmative action is going to be impeded service delivery”?
(A yes or no answer will do.)
Gwebecimele says:
March 3, 2010 at 11:03 am
Very interesting.
“Some of the study’s major findings show that of the 269 chief executive positions, Africans occupied 4 percent, coloureds 3 percent, Indians 2 percent and whites 91 percent. Women accounted for 3 percent and men 97 percent.”
“Of 339 top executive leadership positions, Africans held 15 percent, coloureds 1 percent, Indians 2 percent and whites 82 percent. Women occupied 9 percent and men 91 percent.”
So those who are arguing against affirmative action have to make a better case.
The notion that the country is getting screwed up because of EE does not hold!
Has anyone given any thought to what an extremely limited way of thinking this whole affirmative action debate is symptomatic of?
The old zero-sum-total idea. The Fabian finite pie concept. For you to be ahead in the game of life I have to be losing. (Even if I am not quite sure yet.)
Negative thinking from beginning to end.
A simple proportionality test: Are there other, less offensive, harmful ways to reach the same objectives?
Well, we have not given it much thought, now have we? Thanks to the quality of the people the ANC put in office the national discourse has been debased so we focus 24/7/365 on JZ’s adulterine children or JuJu’s latest outrage.
What we do know is that the ANC’s affirmative action policies have not worked.
Do you want to repeat the same senseless actions over and over expecting a different result?
Maggs, that is an intellectually fraudulent response.
Was the study of black management ratios in government or the private sector?
Maggs, I think you will find that the bigots who argue that service delivery has been hampered by AA are thinking more of the public sector, where AA has been much more extensive than in the private sector.
How tragic that even some people in govt (see Pierre’s quotes in his posting of a few weeks back), seem to have been infected with this horrible racist meme!
(But most of all, we mourn the capture even of Dr Ramephele by racist ideology on this subject.)
Brett Nortje says:
March 3, 2010 at 11:37 am
“What we do know is that the ANC’s affirmative action policies have not worked.”
Give it time – it’s just under 20 lyears.
The other okes had a couple of centuries.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 11:43 am
Well spotted Dworky – the private sector certainly needs some shaking up.
Where’s Mr Myani when he’s needed most!
I want to know what if you are a male and you apply for a promotion. You are a qualified and experienced candidate in the field. You get short listed and get interviewed. The panel recommends you for the position, but the employer than decides that the position needs to be filled by a black woman. She has never exercised the core related job and does not even come close to me with what qualifications are concerned. She gets the promotion. Affirmative action is used by them as justification.
Maggs, elections are intervalled – across the world – in four or five year cycles for a reason. Wars are fought and won in less time.
Can you honestly tell me that this country is closer to its goals (those unrelated to JZ’s zip or JuJu’s bank balance, that is) than it was 5 years ago? 10 years ago?
Godless, shameless ANC!
Can you tell me in what modern democracy JuJu would not have been forced to withdraw from public life because of the collapsed bridges, and the tenders for the collapse bridges?
Godless, shameless ANC!
(Maggs, I noticed that you did not post many links from the Sunday newspapers???? ???)
The country knows it is on a road to nowhere, Maggs.
Hence the violent, destructive service delivery protests.
The must be something which is more effectively implemented out there other than EE/BBBEE. Could it be some resistance movement WEE and they are definately succeeding at keeping status quo.
Brett Nortje says:
March 3, 2010 at 12:50 pm
“Can you tell me in what modern democracy JuJu would not have been forced to withdraw from public life because of the collapsed bridges, and the tenders for the collapse bridges?”
For starters –
Who is Dick Cheney?
Who is Haliburton?
BTW The country is closer to its goals that it was five years ago.
There’s a lot of crap – note if you will that a lot of the havoc that is emerging was not as a result of the current administration, it’s baggage from the past.
@ Brett: “Godless, shameless ANC.”
Shameless they are. But not Godless.
To the contrary, the deep conservatism, hypocrisy, anti-liberalism, irrationalism, moral smugness and authoritarian tendencies, specifically of the non-communist wing of the ANC, trace directly to the insidious Anglican mission school traditions of the old Transkei.
@ Maggs
“a lot of the havoc that is emerging was not as a result of the current administration, it’s baggage from the past.”
Maggs, thank you, this is a very insightful observation. I wonder why no one in the ANC has ever pointed out that they are saddled with baggage from the past?
Dworky, I wonder why no one in the ANC has ever pointed out that 15 years is really very little time to sort out the baggage from the past, that they would really appreciate a couple of centuries like the other guys.
I think that kind of alibi would have received a generous reception from service delivery ‘protestors’ in say, Orange Farm?
‘A better life for all’ in 2210?
Has a certain ring to it….
‘Onwards, to a better life for all in 2210!’
‘Viva, a better life for all in 2210!’
‘Together, we can do more in 2210!’
Really, I think the ANC should fire their spindoctors’ asses and appoint Maggs!
Brett, with respek you strike me as a terrible political philosopher, a mediocre theologian — and a crazed gun nut to boot,
Yet, I cannot fault your proposal that Maggs be made the ANC’s chief spin doctor.
His penetrating and novel proposal that the ANC cannot be blamed for the legacy of the apartheid government has surely earned him the top job!
One would have thought that the ANC would have routinely invoked exactly this argument to rebuff the bitter criticism they must endure from the liberal racist camp. And yet …
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 13:27 pm
“I wonder why no one in the ANC has ever pointed out that they are saddled with baggage from the past?”
Hey Dworky, read the Polokwane resolutions.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 14:03 pm
Ah – now I get it.
You thought I meant apartheid – not this time round.
Sorry Big D – slow Wednesday for me!
Brett Nortje says:
March 3, 2010 at 13:49 pm
LOL!
Hey Brett – maybe the slogan can be “Working together we can create a better life for all after you-know-who returns!”
To Bret Nortje and Michael Osborne, I like your commentary a lot. Thanks for bringing in some balance and occasional irreverence to the debate!
Maggs Naidu says:
March 3, 2010 at 14:15 pm
Who is you-know-who? Is is you-know-who who urgently needs a good spindocter in you-know-where?
Chris says:
March 3, 2010 at 19:50 pm
“Who is you-know-who?”
President Zuma of course – he’s visiting the UK.
Zuma, Zuma where have you been?
I’ve been to London to visit the Queen.
Zuma, Zuma, what did you there?
Not telling!”
Maggs Naidu says:
March 3, 2010 at 20:29 pm
Oh yes, I thought it was you-know-who who urgently needs a good spindocter in you-know-where!
“Zuma, Zuma, what did you there?
Not telling!”
Fortunately the Queen is past her year of you-know-what.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 3, 2010 at 14:03 pm
“His penetrating and novel proposal that the ANC cannot be blamed for the legacy of the apartheid government has surely earned him the top job!”
Interesting take Big D, especially noting that I have not once, in this thread, mentioned any political party.
It seem that for “some among us” anything said that is in disagreement with or challenges their world view, is political propaganda.
http://www.fin24.com/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-24_2574932
This project was initially priced at R7 bn and do taxpayers really get appropriate value for money in these huge projects or is it part of the tender opportunity for the elite. In the weekend papers there is an article that suggest we are paying double for the stadia.
I hope this expensive party will deliver on its promises.
Whilst we are on Gautrain. The budget has more than trippled and the Project Management plus contract management of the individual in charge have not been questioned. Promoting a black captain would have hampered service delivery but I doubt it would have left us with a huge bill such as the proportions of Gautrain.
It is interesting how much space is given to white males to mess up.
Quite right to ask questions, Gwebecimele!
One wonders at the supervision here! A total breakdown of management?
Gwebecimele says:
March 8, 2010 at 11:02 am
“It is interesting how much space is given to white males to mess up.”
Sexist!
Gweecimele is right though.
No-one: Government nor big business – seems to have heard of KITA as a management technique.
Why? Is everyone to busy hoovering?
@ Maggs
Based on the latest figures on who is driving our economy, I fell for the tempatation. You are right. LOL !!!!!!!
Hey Gwebe,
eTV carried visuals of the “terrible” road building by SGL.
It seems that the best evidence that can be produced to sustain the media claims of substandard work is 15 metres of 28 kilometers that collapsed as a result of extraordinarily roads.
There may be a lot of explaining to do around much in the way the tenders were awarded, but what I saw on eTV hardly justifies the claims that the work is shoddy.
@ Maggs
Here is another white male. Highly educated who has been gambling with our taxes. Look at the figures involved and tell me do we have our priorities right?
JOHANNESBURG – Jaco Kriek, CEO of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Ltd (PBMR), on Monday resigned. With government pulling its support on this project it was only a matter of time. Dr Alex Tsela, currently PBMR’s GM: Nuclear Compliance Assurance, has been appointed as the acting CEO.
National Treasury indicated in February its contribution to the PBMR would end, “falling from the R1bn -plus-a-year level to the single-digit millions of rands as from 2010/11″ reports Engineering news.
“Between 2006/7 and 2009/10, the country allocated R7.2bn for the development of the demonstration and fuel plants to prove the pebble-bed modular reactor technology, while it allocated a further R1.73bn in 2009/10 for the programme,” reports Engineering News.
A day after this announcement, PBMR said it would cut up to 600 jobs in an effort to lower costs, and warned that its near and medium term future depended on talks with investors.
Kriek will assist with a hand-over process and will also continue to assist with specific PBMR activities in the next few months.
Kriek said he wants to explore opportunities in the energy industry, but does not have any immediate plans regarding his future. “I am going to take a good break and will consider my new career once I am back,” he says.
Kriek is a qualified Chartered Accountant (SA) and a Fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants (UK). He also obtained an M.Com (Financial Management) degree at the Rand Afrikaans University (now called the University of Johannesburg) and completed a Management Development programme at the INSEAD business school in France.
Before his stint at PBMR he was executive vice president: projects at the IDC, where he was responsible for mega projects.
Gwebecimele and Maggs are right.
I am no fan of Cmd Malema.
But I am more and more convinced that the focus on Cmd Malema is part of a RACIST CONSPIRACY to draw attention away from white businessmen.
Also, I renew my demand for a FULL AUDIT of the expenses associated with “Madam Botox’s” facial upliftments!
Gwebecimele says:
March 8, 2010 at 15:06 pm
Clearly this is rather a case of government gambling with our taxes.
Gwebecimele says:
March 8, 2010 at 15:06 pm
“Jaco Kriek, CEO of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Ltd (PBMR), on Monday resigned. With government pulling its support on this project it was only a matter of time. Dr Alex Tsela, currently PBMR’s GM: Nuclear Compliance Assurance, has been appointed as the acting CEO.”
Nice.
Dr Tsela is set up to become the fall guy – the Black fellow who f…ed up the PBMR.
Andrew Coleman/Khaya Ngqula II – bigger better and coming our way soon!
@ Chris
“Clearly this is rather a case of government gambling with our taxes.”
Would you accept this explanation in the case of SABC, SAA, SENTECH, Eskom etc.
Do you understand the role of a CEO?
Chris says:
March 8, 2010 at 15:26 pm
“Clearly this is rather a case of government gambling with our taxes.”
True dat Chris.
As our resident Big D is regularly at pains to point out, individual failure is only when it’s Black people involved, otherwise it bad government.
If I remember correctly the PBR was pushed hard by Mr “human instrumentality” Alec Irwin. I thought he was white? At the time many people said this was a very bad idea and would sot us billions but Irwin said they were all stupid for saying so. Maybe this saga says less about race and more about the hubris and arrogance of some of Thabo Mbeki’s Ministers (black or white).
Maggs, I know you are not one of those liberal whingers who complains endlessly about governmental malfeasance, but will never lift a finger to do anything about it.
So, I urge you to contribute generously to our new DIZU (“Demand for Investigation of Zille Upliftment”) Fund. We will be briefing counsel to approach the Public Protector to launch an unlimited probe.
Find us on the web.
Good memory, Pierre. Unfortunately it softens somewhat a point I would like to make: Gwebecimele, as long as we typecast everything under the sun in racial categories – which is what affirmative action does – everything under the sun will be interpreted in racial terms.
Seen the comments under the link you posted?
This country was bigger than that for a couple of years.
Brett Nortje says:
March 8, 2010 at 16:55 pm
What in your view is the alternative to AA?
@ Pdv
“Maybe this saga says less about race and more about the hubris and arrogance of some of Thabo Mbeki’s Ministers (black or white).”
Pierre, just as the days of blaming eveything under the sun for apartheid are drawing to a close, so too is it becoming less and less credible to damn TM (or his Cabinet), for our travails.
No-brainer, Maggs! Freedom of choice!
Freedom of choice is not just the domain of those who want to murder the innocent unborn.
Where in the last 16 years was this cornerstone constitutional value lost?
‘Freedom’! The word means what it says!
‘Freedom’! A ‘rights culture’! These are not taboo words! Swearwords? These words are not threats to individual security. It is the godless, shameless, warlords, the corrupt kleptocrats in the ANC that failed these beautiful ideas in the implementation!
If this country worked, if there was an efficient administration, delivery orientated and growth directed implementation there would be opportunities in abundance for black school-leavers and no room for scoundrels to hide behind emotive racist alibis.
Again, Blame the darkies!!!!!!!!
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292681?oid=472709&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226
Now here is the real reason for Sasol’s performance.
The detail within today’s half -year results from oil-from-coal giant Sasol raises similar questions on the ability of the board to fulfill its primary purpose of taking sensible strategic decisions.
As our table, tracking each of the half years results since 2007 shows, Sasol’s earnings are extremely volatile. This is because despite large investments in chemicals and mining, the group’s performance is dependent on a single factor over which neither its managers nor its board has any control. That’s the rand price of oil – the figure that determines the revenue it receives for its dominant product, the fuel produced from coal.
In recent years, both the global oil price and the exchange rate of the rand have been highly unpredictable. For instance, operating profit hit a record R21.5bn in the half-year to December 2008, then collapsed to just R3.1bn during the next six months.
One can argue that a major responsibility for boards faced with this kind of profit volatility is to tuck away excesses earned in the good times; and be sure its managers are not rewarded (or penalised) for that which they cannot influence. As with Group Five, Sasol’s board failed shareholders on both counts. And did so despite ample research freely available – and we’re not referring here to the disastrous Nigerian adventure which cost billions nor the continuous commissioning delays in Qatar.
Buffett might be the highest profile voice against them, but he’s by no means alone in his criticism of companies repurchasing their own equity. Academic research reveals that share-buybacks are often promoted by executives focusing on the short-term issues (the share price) than the long- term requirements of the business.
Rather than taking heed, Sasol’s board approved and implemented a double jeopardy strategy in 2008. Not only did it give the thumbs up for management to buyback Sasol shares at what hindsight shows was inflated prices, but the group actually borrowed heavily to do so. Some R12.5bn in debt was raised in 2008 to be spent on share purchases in the open market at prices significantly higher than the current R288. Only when the financial crisis hit during the six months to June last year – smashing Sasol’s profits to a fraction of their normal level – was this costly strategy reversed.
Linked to this blunder was the board’s inability to reward executives only for what was within their control. So the first half bonanza followed by the collapse in profits had the perverse effect of putting a hefty R3bn into the pockets of executives through “share based payments” – the cost of share options to staff. At the current run rate, that’s equivalent to three months’ total attributable profit. And in spite of “ordinary” six months to December 2009, a further R524m was gifted to management in this manner by its shareholders. Ordinary, that is, in the sense of a commentator being kind to a sportsman having an off day.
The good news is Sasol’s numbers lifted off the trough of the previous half-year (to June 2009) and its interim dividend was raised 12% in spite of a 51% earnings drop from the record of the directly comparable period. But the numbers don’t travel as well when compared with the most recent half year when it received a similar price for its major product.
At the risk of being accused of over simplifying the analysis, the best comparison for Monday’s results would be during the six months for the half year to end December 2008. Then the oil price averaged R568 a barrel compared with the R545 a barrel in the half year under review.
In 2008, headline earnings per share were 36% higher than those reported on Monday, primarily because Sasol’s profit margin has fallen from the 25% norm of the past few years to a less flattering 18%. Employee costs – something which management can influence in a group like this – have jumped from 11.6% in 2008 to 14% of revenue now. Operating cash flows, long Sasol’s strength, have fallen more than a third from R14.1bn to R9.2bn.
For a group that churns out more than R1.5bn in free cash every month, shareholders can and should expect better from both the strategic direction provided by the board, and the group’s well-paid managers. Until that is shown to be the case, those who want a punt on the rand price of oil may do better by investing directly into the JSE’s Oil Futures. At least with that vehicle there’s no sharing of super profits with those who haven’t earned them.
Brett Nortje says:
March 8, 2010 at 18:35 pm
“No-brainer, Maggs! Freedom of choice!”
It seems a brainer to me Brett.
The question was “What in your view is the alternative to AA?”
Any chance that you can respond in a way that a “no brainer” like me can understand?
Gwebecimele, give us a list of board members over the last 10 years?
Maggs, I refuse to accept that the paradigm you want to frame our debate in is a valid one.
I say AA is unnecessary. The burden of proof is on you proponents of AA.
You tell us why AA is necessary, a justifiable means to and end, justify the end, and then tell us that AA is an effective way to achieve that justifiable end.
I say AA has failed in all those respects, and the collapsing state administration is an example.
@ Brett
Black People are yet to run Sasol or even have sgnificant shareholding.
Fakude, Nyasulu, Gantsho and others were acccomodated after Brian Molefe from PIC made noise about transformation at sasol. The R3.6 bn penalty in Europe plus the local R200 million from our Competition Commission do not involve any black person.
@ Brett
Look at this company. If it is the one that is being charged for price fixing then it is not suprising. The Employment Equity Commission must visit this company, it really belives in the skills of white males. Check the Executive as well, as a norm one darkie at HR.
http://www.pioneerfoods.co.za/corp_pro/directors.asp
Brett Nortje says:
March 9, 2010 at 14:31 pm
Let’s try again.
Do you think that ours is a society of racial inequality as a consequence of decades, if not centuries, of iniquitous governments?
Brett, you say AA is not necessary.
Consider this: a police service and army in which the officer corp is largely white would have about 0% legitimacy in the eyes of most South Africans.
And without a shred of legitimacy, the security services simply could not function — even if each member was armed with very high velocity large calibre firearms.
Skop en donor will make sure those officers are legitimate.
Apply Pass laws and a new version of shoot to kill.
@ Gwebecimele
If you are right that skop/donner makes the SAPS legitimate, it should already be very legitimate.
A UN committee has expressed concern at the high level deaths in police custody in past apartheid South Africa.
(http://www.communitylawcentre.org.za/clc-projects/civil-society-prison-reform-initiative/newsletters/newsletter/CSPRI%20Newsletter%2031.pdf/)
No, Maggs, I do not buy that anymore. That is what I use to argue when I was very young, and then I would go on to bore you about the North-South dichotomy, and then again about the terrible legacy of Apartheid, and and and
No more. No more alibis. Bullshit walks. If you want to be bored I’ll tell you why.
If the first white man was to step foot on South African soil in April 2010 nothing would be different. The disparaties would be exactly the same, and you would still find an overwhelming number of black South Africans who want what those white people have and have no idea how to get it except by violence.
Black South Africans have had 16 years to show this country can be different than every country North of us. What is it? Service delivery prrotests in 3 different centres on one day? Oukasie, Mamelodi, Soshanguve?
You want to throw your weight about, act like you have all the answers?
Man up when the laughter starts because you screwed up.
And Stompie Sepei’s Winnie has the cheek to blame the constitutional order? While her colleagues and President no longer even pay lip-service to the Constitution and the rule of law?
Maggs, you owe us the utility test. Show us there is some kind of proportionality between AA, the harms it has caused, its potential and that there is no other, better way to arrive at the same outcome without causing those harms to the constitutional order, the state administration, individual relations..
Not to be contrarian, Michael, but simply because things are heading downhill so fast that each of us should questions our most cherished basic assumptions: The R4 and R5 rifles the army uses use high velocity yes, small-calibre (.223) bullets used for varmint hunting (in the US, where ammuntion is much cheaper, prairie dogs somewhat similar to our dassies.)
To avoid the thrust of your question because I kind of agree with your point I will merely raise the issue of consequences v intentions again. Mutiny? Striking soldiers? One battalion combat ready and HIV-free for deployment in the Congo?
Regular shooting rampages on SANDF bases?
Gwebecimele, here is the 2007 Board of SASOL. Beautifully PC.
Your point was again?
Pieter Cox
Pat Davies
Nolitha Fakude b
Benny Mokaba b
Christine Ramon b
Elisabeth Bradley
Brian Connellan
Henk Dijkgraaf
Mandla Gantsho b
Anshu Jain b
Imogen Mkhize b
Sam Montsi b
Hixonia Nyasulu b
Jürgen Schrempp
Tom Wixley
Brett, if you “kind of agree with my point,” are you prepared to withdraw or qualify your flat statement to Maggs: AA “is not necessary.”
Brett Nortje says:
March 9, 2010 at 17:57 pm
“No, Maggs, I do not buy that anymore. ”
Ok.
No, Michael.
There have to be other ways to build institutional legitimacy than playing the racist numbers game. It is simply metastasising the cancer. Fallacious reasoning is the basis of that kind of beancounting. Using race as the building blocks of a non-racial society is logically inconsistent. Oxymoronic.
Your basic point of departure is not invalid: White soldiers, black crowds at service delivery protests would certainly not go down well anywhere in the world. My counter to that would be that you Kick In The Ass bigtime in the state administration to ensure that there are no service delivery riots. And, the army should not be involved in policing. Whichever South African problem you want to hi-lite – ineffective management always features largely.
The next question that arises is why – when we see the SAPS firing birdshot at crowds on ETV news – is there always such a disproportionally large number of white cops there? Cunning, shameless ANC?
It is true that a police service in which the officer corp is largely white would have about 0% legitimacy in the eyes of most South Africans.
It is just a pity that I don’t think it can be said today the police service has much more than 0% legitimacy in the eyes many South Africans.
OK, Brett, so you reasoning is this: we make sure that security forces are as racially illegitimate as possible, because that will encourage govt to take whatever steps are needed to avoid service delivery problems. This line of argument will never win you a prize for logic.
But leave that aside. In a country where the overwhelming proportion of criminals are black, you think it is would be just fine that virtually the entire police leadership (and, by your reasoning, almost all judges), is white?
Again, sounds slightly dodgy to my ears.
Michael, why would you assume black South Africans would never make it into the top echelons of the army, the police, the judiciary, except as the product of a contrived outcome?
I cannot accept that!
Who wants to live in a country where there is no prevailing ethos of everyone treating everyone like they were created in the image of the Lord?
@Michael- your link doesn’t work – website updated. Can you correct for us please?
http://www.communitylawcentre.org.za/clc-projects/civil-society-prison-reform-initiative/newsletters/newsletter/CSPRI%20Newsletter%2031.pdf/)
Gwebecimele says:
March 8, 2010 at 11:32 am
Hey Gwebe – this is an interesting read.
“We find ourselves divided when it comes to the economic front. Some white people feel that they are being robbed of their right to make money. Others feel that they are no longer wanted nor needed in South Africa because of the colour of their skin. What they fail to understand is that there are black people who feel that this freedom is worthless because they still have nothing. They still see white people prosperous while they get poorer and poorer. Each side sees themselves as worse than the other. Each side paints itself as a greater victim than the other. Some scream reverse racism while others scream economic apartheid.
“The truth is there are no victims. There are many who expect manna from heaven. There will be no such thing. People were on their own during apartheid, or if you wish, the desert years. There was no manna then, there will be none now. In the words of the great Steve Biko, ‘Black man, you are on your own’.”
http://www.news24.com/Content/Columnists/Khaya-Dlanga/4197/53a39d81d8854baeafe5dce5b0b86b9f/09-03-2010-09-00/Black_man,_youre_on_your_own
Brett, when did I ever say blacks would “never” make it to the top ranks of the police etc. on merit?
The problem is that, thanks to: (a) Bantu Education; (b) inferior tertiary education under apartheid; (c) professional discrimination under apartheid; (d) continued under-investment in education since 1994, there is — for the time being — a grave shortage of qualified black candidates for the top echelons. (That is, unless, like Maggs, you think qualifications and experience count for absolutely naught, or, like Pierre, you deem the very concept of merit to be “nebulous”)
So, until educational and professional opportunties have been equalised for a generation or two, the only way one get a reasonable number of black candidates into the upper ranks is via AA. This is not a choice, but an absolute imperative.
Michael Osborne says:
March 9, 2010 at 21:10 pm
“That is, unless, like Maggs, you think qualifications and experience count for absolutely naught”
???
Michael, I am not going to trivialise what you are arguing. It is our almost insurmountable reality.
I do not have all the answers. But many, many questions. Bantu education was in many ways superior to the education system post 1994. Why was tertiary education inferior under Apartheid? Where? Christelike Volks Onderwys was such a succesful piece of social engineering that displaced beneficiaries walk into jobs across the world. Do you solve your skills shortage by displacing more? Which is the nett effect of AA?
Continued under-investment? Point a finger for me at countries which spend a greater proportion of their budgets on education – largely fruitlessly?
How long is ‘for the time being’? Two generations? How much room do you think there is for more maladministration? Considering that we had service delivery unrest in at least three parts of the state today?
Which leads me to the most important question: What is going to be the lot of the black kids who attend schools in ‘white’ working and middle-class suburbs (bussed in, taxi’d in, sent by their domestic worker mothers) – compared to where they come from, very good schools – when they get tired of being a supermarket cashier who speaks English like a mother tongue?
Is there room for mistakes in this equation let alone the ANC’s constant dithering?
Brett, I think it is wonderful that you and Maggs can find one thing to agree upon: Bantu education, Bush colleges, etc. were not so bad. How else could they have produced so many graduates who, on merit alone, were perfectly ready to step into the highest posts in the new South Africa?
(Also, I suppose you think that, contrary to popular belief, the Bantustan civil services were veritable centres of excellence. Thank heavens for that; they were the incubators of a generation of people who have no need of affirmative action to vault to the very top post-1994.)
Straw men again, Michael?
Michael Osborne says:
March 9, 2010 at 22:22 pm
“I think it is wonderful that you and Maggs can find one thing to agree upon: Bantu education, Bush colleges, etc. were not so bad.”
???
Michael Osborne says:
March 9, 2010 at 22:22 pm
“How else could they have produced so many graduates who, on merit alone, were perfectly ready to step into the highest posts in the new South Africa?”
And the Trojan Horse emerges!
Brett, I take it that you agree that it is simply untenable that we have, for example, security services where the upper echelons are overwhelmingly white. And I think we also agree that, given equality of opportunity, the numbers will eventually even out. But do you really think we could go for another generation in which the security services look, demographically, a little like the SAP of old? I think not. I have my own doubts about the morality of AA. And it is indeed a source of endless corruption. And yet, pragamatically speaking, it has to be done, somehow.
A few years ago the Univ of Texas law school dropped AA in its admissions. Students were admitted based largely on standardised test and college grades. Result: the percentage of black students plummeted to below 5%. Only then did thoughtful observers understand that AA is, in some form, still indispensible. It is not tenable, given its history, that America’s top law schools produce virtually no black graduates.
The whole country benefits from diversity in the elite institutions. Yes, this means that some white applicants see their places taken by black students with lower grades. Life is tough.
Michael, the problem you have in selling the affirmative action argument is
a) we now have a track record of 16 years of misrule
and
b) in the world we live in actions are judged by their consequences, policies by the results.
What is still fresh in many people’s memories is the bullying, the bluster, the thinly veiled hate speech, the pushing and shoving to get white South Africans out of the state administration. You make AA sound very unemotional, clinical, reasonable, value neutral when it is documented that the process was not. Theirs is a documented track record, this was covered in our newspapers extensively.
From the incredibly inept Stella Sicgau – who made the white execs at Armscor stand up, then told them to look around, soon none of them would be there – to teachers; to the prosecuting authority, the judiciary, and yes, you are right to focus on it, the security services: What have the results of AA been?
Derisive laughter at their failures is the pompous greedy ANC jackasses’ just reward.
There is a documented history.
An attack on a Judge President’s family. SAPS crime scene investigators come and go. A day later his murdered granddaughter is found under a bed.
Couple of blocks down from us. An attack and multiple shooting on a tavern – in the main road! SAPS crime scene investigators come and go. Two days later another body is found under a bush. Presumably someone noticed the smell.
Do you want to go on with the list?
Brett, no you need not go on with the list; I could give you many more examples of the inefficiencies and inequities of AA.
But you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (I know – you think its all bathwater. Conversely, Maggs and Gwebe think its all baby.)
The challenge is to come up with targeted AA programs in areas (like education), where they are indisputedly essential, and tailor such programs to do the least possible harm.
But never get around to debating how we could achieve this. That is because the debate is polarised. On the one hand, there are people like you – who think AA is always and everwhere anathema. And people like Maggs and Gwebe – who will not, it seems admit in public that AA has any downsides at all, ever.
The ANC screws up everything it touches. We need to fundamentally reinvent the state.
You could easily have sold that argument to me in the ‘New South Africa’, Michael. Too much water under the bridge.
I am not exactly devastated that Winnie’s attitude is hardening so.
@ Brett
Those blacks were only appointed recently and have not been there for 10 yrs.
Secondly they are yet to influence Sasol and had no role in the debacles of Sasol. PIC’ Brian Molefe fought to have a black person appointed in this board two years ago.What you are trying to do is similar to blaming Godsell for eskom’s problems.
Come now, Gwebecimele! Is that arguing honestly?
You refer to results from 2007 and a financial crisis due to poor, short-sighted decisions that originated roughly then.
I gave you the Board composition for 2007. The Board that benefitted from the largesse referred to in the article you sourced for us.
These are facts, not my racist interpretation of them.
@ Brett
Sasol is a white company and that is a fact. The only influence this black government has on Sasol is via a 26 % held by (PIC and IDC). The executive is majority white including all past CEO’s. The Deputy Chairmen who also served on a Bidvest board was also challenged on transformation at Bidvest.
Let me give another illustration, Schalwyk is a member of cabinet but we all know he has no influence in it. Stop blaming these less influential individuals.
@ Brett
Did you notice that all the black members of that board under 50 whereas the white males are nearing 70 (above 60) and above. That alone should tell you where the institutional culture, power and memory lies.
Stop being naive.
@ Brett
“The ANC screws up everything it touches.”
This may be true, but it does not contribute much to the debate on AA.
Brett, it seems to me you are not really that interested in debating AA, any more than Maggs and Gwebe are. You are absolutely, uncritically against; they are absolutely uncritically for. No point in any further discussion if thoe are the starting points.
Michael Osborne says:
March 10, 2010 at 11:03 am
I am impressed with the innovative ways that you have come up with to euphemistically oppose AA.
It’s also disingenuous for you to say that I am not “interested in debating AA”.
You have Malemarised my comments with alacrity – those comments having been made in the context of the very AA debate that you say I am not interested in debating.
I read your model for AA as let’s keep everything as it was prior to 1994. The way that you achieve that is by rubbishing all Black qualifications from “the bush colleges”. Re those who qualified post 1994 you argue that they do not have sufficient experience.
Just who does that leave as the people to occupy important and strategic posts?
Maggs, ‘your model’ is a complete misstatement of Michael’s fanciful position. He is a liberal trying to be nice about failure – I also think he is short on the specifics of his alternative.
You, however, and Gwebecimele, act as if all the failures did not happen.
Rather like arguing that the sun did not come up this morning!
Maggs, I said that AA was an “absolute imperative.”
Which one of these two words do you do understand?
(Or is it the conjunction that puzzles you?)
Michael Osborne says:
March 10, 2010 at 14:31 pm
“Or is it the conjunction that puzzles you?”
It does indeed – perhaps you missed my admission previously that I am very slow (consequence of genetics and third class education) – the nice thing for me though is that I no longer have to accept what people who are smarter than me have to say or go to jail for challenging that.
That aside – if we use your model that rubbishes qualifications from the then “bush colleges” and exclude anyone who qualified post 1994, just who is left to occupy important and/or strategic posts?
Brett Nortje says:
March 10, 2010 at 14:31 pm
Hey Brett,
I accepted that it is your position that AA is a no-no.
Everything else becomes irrelevant.
Maggs, I described AA as an “absolute imperative.”
What part of these words do you not understand?
Michael Osborne says:
March 10, 2010 at 14:40 pm
Both!
Be kind to a not so bright fellow and explain it please.
Maggs, which of the observations about all the negative baggage and malicious or unintended consequences accompanying your Nevarapine-solution have been controverted?
Maggs, I think I see the nub of our disagreement.
In my view, it is precisely because I think (unlike Brett, and perhaps you), that apartheid education generally (not just the Bush Colleges), was very bad — indeed, one of the most destructive aspects of the system — that AA is so necessary.
The point is that, for reasons Ramphele and others have pointed out, AA must be applied carefully and in a targeted fashion. It must certainly not be applied in a manner that condems yet another generation to inferior schooling.
@ Michael
Debating AA with Brett will be more difficult than disarming him. Anyway I dragged the debate longer so that I can test how strong are his views on the subject. I am under no illusion that I can convince him to see things differently.
I can’t remember claiming that AA/Baby is well implemented without fault, infact the opposite is true. I have been very consistent in highlighting the shortcomings of BEE and AA and the missed opportunities of the last 20 yrs.
Here is my opinion. Targeted AA in Education is a good long term strategy but that will only deliver 10 to 15 yrs from now, anyway it targets young people.
Enterprenurial opportunities must be created now by providing well managed tenders for mainly blacks. Land distribution and agricultural support should have been more than 50% achieved by now. EE, AA and procurement must be implemented immediately with recognisable penalties for those who are sabotaging the process. Decent houses( not RDP), INFRASTRUCTURE Projects ( NOT World Cup, Gautrain, Arms deal, PBMR) should have been used to create employment and provide skills training.
I guess you are comfortable enough to wait for spin offs from education and you do not want to cause harm which I find to be cowardice. 16 yrs into this democracy, most people have very little to show unlike the few of us who managed to get tenders and special appointments. Yours is an elitist view of what needs to happen in this country and you equate ours to views of racist bigots who are beyond redemption. What is this middle ground (baby+ water) you are talking about ?
Michael, I never trivialised Bantu Education by making it out to be ‘not so bad’! I am saying look at what the ANC put in its place! Nothing better! The nett effect is worse.
Back in the days before the ANC destroyed the mining industry with its greedy protection rackets there would be many mineworkers in Roodepoort when I drove down to the ATM. There wasn’t a mall on every corner or an ATM in every service station. I can remember several instances during the height of the ‘liberation before education’ phase when these guys – from Transkei, and KwaZulu, not Zimbabwe, nor Nigeria – would turn around to me with a slip of paper in one hand and an ATM card in the other.
Deliberately consigning people to ignorance – with the generalisation “‘they’ burnt ‘their’ schools down, let them suffer” was just plain unChristian.
Michael, you sacrificed and worked your butt off to build a career. You pay more of every sent you earn in tax than you keep. Tell me you cannot see that the hourglass is running out and nothing seems set to change for the better in the foreseeable future unless we all become very unpleasant about the situation very quickly?
@ Michael
AA is intended to support professionals/employees who are educated , capable and have potential to bring them on the same level as their white counterparts who are supported by networks, institutions, culture, religion communities etc. Who amongst this group do you want to target and who should be left out?
How does AA condemn the next generation to inferior schooling? Perhaps you have fallen for the trick that AA means lowering of standards.
Gwebe, I agree with almost everything you mention. But I do not class housing, land redistribution, etc. as AA. I call that poverty relief. And for most people, that is much more important than AA, which, like BEE is very much a middle class concern.
As for the middle ground (baby + bathwater), I could you refer you the work of Ramphele and Mbeki (junior.) That means: an overwhelming emphasis on education – by which I mean adult training, as well as schooling. It means banning tokenism and fronting. Also, intensive mentoring. And also, as Ramphele warns,not undermining education and service deliver by pushing people into jobs for which they are not ready. (On that note, how exactly is “not wanting to cause harm” a form of cowardice?
Brett, if you concede that apartheid education was an abomination, why are you utterly opposed to measures to try to deal with the consequences? Properly applied, AA means (a) massively funded educational programs for victims of apartheid education; and (b) where there are two more or less equally qualified applicants, and servce delivery will not be harmed, the job, all things being equal, goes to a black person.
What is so bad about that?
Gwebecimele says:
March 10, 2010 at 15:25 pm
“Perhaps you have fallen for the trick that AA means lowering of standards.”
That pretty much captures it.
Where standards have been lowered, the space has been created for those opposed to transformation to argue their case – that won’t wash, but it does not stop the trying.
@ Michael
My understanding of Poverty relief means initiatives that target people who have fallen below poverty line and the intention is to give them relief ( short term) rather than an opportunity to prosperity and higher quality of life. Social grants and an RDP house will do just that, give you shelter and enough to survive. This may assist about 10 million poor individuals in SA.
What I am refering to, are programs that create unlimited opportunities for our people to become farmers, enterpreneurs, managers, decision makers and participate in the knowledge economy. Let us maximise opportunities for black people to move into the middle class in numbers rather than creating a nanny state. Education is one way of doing it but it is a long term and anyway this will not do much at the level of adult education. I have listened and read Mbeki & Ramphele and I support their views on long term basis. What do we do now on AA, EE, Procurement etc? Why are blacks doing all the hard work in construction, farming,mining etc but are not the owners of those industries? We can commit 50% of govt spending to black firms (truly black not fronting) and that will create enough opportunities for our people until our economy reflects the demographics of the country. You can also set targets for AA, EE, tV & rADIO content etc. We are in charge and we make all the laws and we stop blaming apartheid for the things we can change. There is a lot we can do now.
@ Maggs
“Where standards have been lowered …”
Maggs, with respect, to suggest that standards may have been lowered because of “affirmative action” reeks of pungent racism.
I demand that you specify exactly where “standards have been lowered” due to aa.
Michael Osborne says:
March 10, 2010 at 15:02 pm
I agree with you that apartheid education was terrible (like pretty much the rest of apartheid).
However some of our finest people emerged through what was then available.
As Gwebe points out, we have settled in some instances for performance below acceptable levels – CFO of municipalities for example who do not keep document/audit trails are not a consequence of AA, instead we should regard them as lazy or corrupt bums that ought to be fired. The same for engineers who certify engineering work that later collapses or hospital managers who allow the horrible conditions in facilities under their care and and and.
Sub standard work is not the consequence of AA it’s a consequence of us, all of South Africa, not sticking up for what we expect and want.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 10, 2010 at 16:08 pm
Hey Big D,
Still cracking I see.
“to suggest that standards may have been lowered because of ‘affirmative action’”
Did I say that??
Where???
Maggs, you wrote at 16h01:
“Where standards have been lowered, the space has been created for those opposed to transformation to argue their case …”
I demand that you withdraw or apologise.
1) “Properly applied”? How much more time do you want to start ‘properly applying’ AA? Maggs’ two centuries?
2) “massively funded educational programs for victims of apartheid education”? How much more money do you want to see go down the drain? For no return? When we have 3 service delivery protests in one day?
3) “the job, all things being equal, goes to a black person”? This is a bit like Eugene Terreblanche playing eenie meanie minie mo on his fingers over the race of the person who is going to get it that day. With respect, Michael: I am not exactly unfamiliar with that line of reasoning. People culling animals use those thought processes.
It is dehumanising and leaves its mark on the victim and perpetrator.
.
Nothing has been stated that controverts the basic truth that, if the ANC would stop screwing up (you understand that I use euphemisms because there are kids present) and appointing screw-ups to government this would be a land of abundance for all of us. Many, many choices. That is why people keep streaming here from countries that know real deprivation.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 10, 2010 at 16:29 pm
Again Big D, I ask where did I say “because of ‘affirmative action’”???
Brett Nortje says:
March 10, 2010 at 16:29 pm
“How much more time do you want to start ‘properly applying’ AA? Maggs’ two centuries?”
As long as it takes!
Gwebecimele, why can those programs not create unlimited opportunities for ALL our people to become farmers, enterpreneurs, managers, decision makers and participate in the knowledge economy?
Maggs, I want you to man-up and give us a firm, irreversible commitment in the form of a timeframe when you will pronounce that AA is a dismal failure or not!
2210?
Brett Nortje says:
March 10, 2010 at 16:54 pm
Let me try in the simplest terms I can.
AA is successful.
And, in my view, it must continue until it is no longer relevant – if that is beyond 2210, so be it.
Maggs – It seemed clear from the context — because the whole debate was around the scurrilous nonsense that standards had dropped because of aa.
But if that is not what you meant, I am frankly relieved.
I thought you might be slipping.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 10, 2010 at 17:39 pm
Thank you Big D.
Assumptions are the mothers of confusion – and as we know from good old King Crimson “Confusion will be my epitaph”.
The previous DG for Education, Duncan Hindle, could hardly be described as an AA appointment.
Education, possibly the most important of transformation imperatives, was terribly wanting in many, many areas.
Apartheid was successful, Maggs!
@ Gwebe
I admire your contributions, but I am a little disturbed to see you saying that, at some level, you agreed with Dr Ramphele.
Are you aware that she has articulated grave doubts about affirmative action? Are you aware that she reportedly told Parliament that poorly executed affirmative action programmes had succeeded only in removing skilled white professionals and replacing them with underskilled and incompetent black ones?
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 10, 2010 at 18:20 pm
“Are you aware that she has articulated grave doubts about affirmative action? ”
Reference?
The last time you lied about what she said.
Ok maybe not lied, but you did not speak the truth (some may argue that deliberately telling untruths is a lie, but in your case I will concede an exception).
OK Maggs:
“Replacing competent white people with unqualified and incompetent black people is unjust to both parties, and exceedingly costly for society. Such practices are at the heart of poor service delivery in the public sector.”
What do you say, Maggs? Think I made this quote up?
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 10, 2010 at 20:34 pm
“What do you say, Maggs? Think I made this quote up?”
Yeah – I think you made it up.
But I agree with the spirit of the quote that you made up, not the manner in which you said it.
I would suggest the following just so that it is perfectly clear :
“Replacing competent white people with incompetent black people is plain f@#$ing stupid.
A&^#*@les!”
The quote is from:
‘Laying Ghosts to Rest’ (2009) 251-252.
Needless to say, I condemn this grossly racist sentiment of Dr Ramphele.
And so should you.
Hey Big D,
“Replacing competent white people with unqualified and incompetent black people” is not affirmative action, it’s the work of dunces.
It is really distasteful to debate this way because it satisfies no-ones’ sense of justice that there should be no remedy where there has been an injury.
But, tell me please, how do we set up an intensive scheme for mentoring now, 16 years into ‘democracy’, when the state administration is collapsing and people have become completely cynical about delivery?
Dear Maggs, you are so right.
Will you join me in my demand that Dr Ramphele and Mbeki (Jnr) cease spreading the vicious LIE that the implemention of aa in the form of installing unqualiied and incompetent people has caused great damage in education and service delivery?
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 11, 2010 at 5:19 am
Before I jump in to your rescue, there are “anomalies” which I need to clarify.
“The attendant delay in completing this task responsibly (may create) an opportunity for some to unfairly speculate” that I am shying away from it.
I would love to support your noble cause Big D of knocking AA, but allow some time.
Hey Dworky,
Please check with your contacts (Dr Ramphele and Mbeki (Jnr)) the AA status of these – it’s gonna make our case that “installing unqualiied and incompetent people has caused great damage”.
“AN EAST London woman who took on 13 of the city’s most respected medical doctors has won the first leg of a bitter court battle. …
“Drs Allison Horsell, Anthony Rushton, Wessel Strydom, Huw Williams-Jones, Mark Tarboton and Terence Counihan, all from East Coast Radiology; Drs Brian Kilpert, Louis Coetzee, David Bowen and Robyn Spring, obstetricians and gynaecologists with rooms in Southernwood; and general practitioner Dr Graham Arthur.”
http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=386552
Yes, sure, Maggs! You consistently hold people of all races to the same standards. NOT!
http://www.nuus24.com/Content/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/1479/987806982a3d4b61879fa6f6b22da117/11-03-2010-07-45/Van_skoonmaker_tot_%E2%80%99n_sersant_in_net_%E2%80%99n_paar_dae!
Maggs, I have said before that you are a genius. Now, you prove it again.
Someone should point out to Dr Marmphele and Mr Mbeki that there are tens of thousands of idiot/incompetent white people at every level of government and private industry.
By simple logic, that will certainly prove them both wrong in their racist claim that AA, in particular, has led to some spectacularly bad appointments of unqualfied black people!
If I have time I am going to write to that racist Ramphele that Mr Donald Rumsfeld (who is as white as snow), screwed up the war in Iraq. That itself refutes her claims about the bad effects of affirmative action in our country!
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20100310042637992C435134
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 11, 2010 at 8:06 am
Dworky, you are wrong again.
There is no such thing as “idiot/incompetent white people” – you’re just being your silly racist self again.
There’s only “idiot/incompetent (Black) people”, failure is exclusive Black phenomenon.
White people do not achieve the objective as a result of the complexities of the challenges that they face, the inadequacy of the circumstances in which they function and so forth (and so forth means that I am unable to keep abreast of the profound reasons and rationale that gives rise to the obstacles faced by the “highly qualified, competent and experienced” corps in their quest for professional excellence).
Black people are just naturally useless.
Potholes everywhere. 15 metres of Malema’s 28 km road collapsed. Massive failure rates of matriculants. Rail transport in a mess. Eskom the provider of darkness. Rampant corruption. SAA in the red. SAPS failing to catch the bad guys. and the list goes one!
What else can we expect? After all this has to be the only country in the world that appointed a pharmacist to head its revenue service and a electrical engineer as Minister of Finance.
@ Brett
Once the participation in the economy reflects the demographics of the country then we will open opportunities to all.
@ Dworky
AA is not nepotism. Replacing a competent person by a non-competent is not acceptable irrespective of race.I fully support using education to improve the lives of our people but there are other things that we can do immediately to contribute to the overall transformation of our country.
Gwebecimele says:
March 11, 2010 at 10:05 am
“AA is not nepotism.”
You are wrong Gwebe.
To illustrate that, recall that under the apartheid government the entire IT framework was run by just one person.
There were a few slight drawbacks like when the system went down while the expert was on holiday everyone waited.
The nepotistic ANC government spent hundreds of millions of rands changing that.
Now there are hoards of people, Black people included, doing the job just one fellow did before.
Jobs for pals I tell you!
You mean like a torturer stops once he has the information he wants, Gwebecimele? When continuing past that point would be really mean?
Here is what I am talking about, buy local and buy black.
It seems as if our Treasury is still caught in the olden days.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=95916
Servus,
finde diesen Blog wirklich sehr toll und sehr interessant, derzeit lese ich Blogs sehr gerne, möchte nämlich selbst auch einen Blog einrichten und schreiben (Bewerbung, Bewerbungssoftware, usw.), weiterhin viel Erfolg und
schöne Grüße
Charly
These are the white skills we need.
see below
Doctors without scruples
Issue # 124 – February 2010 Reader’s comments Print this article
Yet another high-life fraudster is on the loose – and going international. Having trawled the country’s professional classes for nearly a decade, Gavin Francois Stassen has turned to the British market, where, he claims, he’s already hauled in over 70 new investors.
The glittering lure for the unwary is a solid-dividend share in a cosmetic clinic venture, allegedly about to begin development in Mauritius, where, it’s claimed, a prime piece of land has been secured from the Mauritius Ministry of Land. Gavin Stassen’s Lifestyle Clinic Group is offering investors 700,000 of 1.2 million shares, at £20 per share for the first 200,000, and £25 per share thereafter.
The promotional brochure is highly convincing (unless you register lapses of grammar and spelling as warning signs). Quoting the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Stassen tells prospective investors that “6.6 million Americans had cosmetic plastic surgery done in 2002,” claiming that a recent poll has revealed that “31% of women and 20%” of men intend undergoing cosmetic surgery.
Investors are invited to participate in the development of a cosmetic clinic and boutique hotel complex (to accommodate the families of clients) to be situated in the tax-haven of Mauritius. The impression is given that “the group” is also moving on similar ventures in the Seychelles, Argentina and the Bahamas.
It’s not clear how many investor/victims Stassen has actually netted – in a recent sales pitch he claimed to have the backing of at least 40 South African plastic surgeons for the venture, as well as hundreds of accountants, teachers and legal types. But Stassen’s claims aren’t exactly gold-coin – for a start, all but one of the men advertised as part of his “team” deny involvement. (And the odd-man-out is not a medic.)
Besides the dozens of disillusioned victims of an earlier version of the scheme, noseweek has so far identified 18 “investors” who have put anything between R60,000 and R2m each into the latest edition of Stassen’s marvel.
Stassen’s face-to-face pitch can be impressive – particularly if name-dropping tends to switch off your bullshit detector. He appears to have a good sense of what the general run of medical practitioners want to hear – particularly the kind with their heads buried in the latest medical procedure manuals, and no time to talk to bona fide financial advisors (there must be some, surely?). Neither Stassen himself nor any of his companies are registered as financial service providers, which they are legally required to do under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act of 2002.
Stassen readily refers to having the support of eminent medical practitioners, and flaunts his long history of successful involvement in hospital development. In a recent pitch to a source for this story, Stassen made much of having secured for his team “Dr Tommy Meyer, Dr Dale Howes and Dr Jan van der Berg, an ophthalmologist representing the Pretoria Eye Institute”. (He also cited the support and involvement of “doctors from the Netherlands and Germany”.)
This, it turned out, was something of a surprise to the team Stassen claims to have on board. Opthalmologist Dr Van der Berg, for example, who is listed in the fancy brochure as one of Lifestyle’s “Specialist Doctors”, strongly denied that he was on Stassen’s “team”. He refused to take
noseweek’s word for it that his name was being used in this connection.
Less than an hour after noseweek spoke to Dr Van der Berg, Gavin Stassen called to demand that noseweek “stop harassing my doctors”. Two days later, Dr Van der Berg’s name vanished from the website – and he was no longer available to discuss the venture with noseweek. Maybe Dr Van der Berg is embarrassed about his true involvement?
Another slick piece of marketing has been Stassen’s claim that he was the driving force behind a host of hospital developments: he claims that his Stassmed Hospital Consultants (registered in partnership with Dr Jackie Shevel in 1989) developed the original 25 clinics that later listed under the Netcare Group. Shortly before that listing, he boasts, he sold his interests to Dr Shevel – for a cool R400m. Dr Shevel, now resident in the US, would, no doubt, be amused.
Another doctor allegedly on Stassen’s team, Dr Dale Howes, appears to have swallowed the Netcare story, hook, line and sinker. Asked about his role in the Lifstyle Clinic Group, Dr Howes told noseweek he didn’t know what we were talking about. “I’m only an investor,” he declared, and professed ignorance of any website. Still on the line, he accessed the site and noseweek felt the good doctor go cold with shock. “What about the Netcare connection? Don’t tell me that’s a fake,” he blurted out.
Noseweek referred Dr Howes to Netcare CEO Dr Richard Friedland, who had already confirmed our findings: “The prospectus of Lifestyle Clinic Group records that Mr Stassen was involved in the development of more than 25 medical facilities and clinics over the past 22 years and that most of the hospitals developed by him through ‘Stassmed’ form part of the Netcare Hospital Group. This representation is not correct. The only link that could be tracked was the fact that Mr Stassen apparently played a minor role in the promotion of one or two of the clinics that were managed by Clinrun CC, a hospital management business owned by Dr Jackie Shevel. At some stage Mr Stassen was a minority shareholder in one or maybe two of these clinics, which were then acquired by Netcare on listing during 1996.
“With regard to Mr Stassen’s apparent claim that he sold his hospital interests for R400m [...] – this could not have been possible as the market capitalisation of Netcare upon listing was only R186m.”
Stassen remains adamant that he has secured land in Mauritius, where everything is in place for building to “soon begin”. Noseweek can confirm this much: Gavin Stassen is indeed known to the Mauritius Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Land Transport & Shipping – they know him as “Dr Stassen”.
The ministry’s permanent secretary, Mr Ram Prakash Nowbuth, categorically denies any deals with Stassen or any of his companies. Mr Nowbuth writes: “This is to confirm that my ministry has neither sold nor leased any property to the people, organisations mentioned nor to any other person or organisation for business or investment purposes.”
Among the first to fall victim to Stassen’s “cosmetic-clinic-on-an-island-paradise” investment fantasy were, it seems, teachers and parents at his kids’ school in Pretoria, around 2004. According to a statement filed with the Silverton police, in January 2005, Stassen allegedly offered a Centurion bookkeeper 1% of shares in The Health & Leisure Group Ltd (Mauritius) for R150,000, promising a 15% return by the end of the first year.
The bookkeeper writes: “He showed me photos of the FernCrest Clinic in Rustenburg and the Bay Hospital in Richards Bay. He also showed me photos of the Berjaya Hotel in Mauritius, which he was going to purchase and where the future clinic was to be located. The hotel was on the southern part of the Island, on the Le Morne Peninsula. I told him I would be interested in the 1% share.”
The man paid up – and introduced friends, relatives and clients to Stassen. By then, his statement says, the price of a 1% share had jumped to R200,000, since Stassen had in the interim, he claimed, obtained a hospital licence.
Among early investors listed in the statement to the police were: Andre Naude (R280,000); Johannes Walters (R250,000); Jaco Venter (R320,000); Hilde Basson (R200,000); Marius Auret (R200,000); Dr Cameron Condi (R150,000); and Dr Dale Howes (R300,000). Dr Howes later increased his investment to R450,000, and confirmed his involvement with the new version of the venture – and ended up “on the team”.
When noseweek asked Stassen what those initial investors had got for their cash, he replied: “I gave them the company [Health & Leisure Group]”. Hearing that noseweek has a recording of a meeting where he promised to refund those “investors”, he commented: “One of them later came to me to ask that I hand over the company to them for their money, which I did. I gave them the company with the intellectual property.”
Isn’t this the same “intellectual property” that forms the basis of the new Lifestyle Clinic Group venture?
And why would one of the victims re-negotiate on behalf of the rest, who had been promised a total refund? Some less than meaningful noises from Mr Stassen on this – and not much you’d call an answer.
Sadly for anyone who’s handed their cash to Stassen, not only does Lifestyle not own land in Mauritius, but it also appears that funds deposited into the Nedbank Stassmed account tend to disappear fairly rapidly, to be spent on various luxury toys and entertainment– top-of-the-range wheels, first class airline tickets, prime holiday accommodation (for Stassen and marketing director/girlfriend Lelanie von Weilligh), and so on.
For instance: On 18 December 2007, Piet Lindeque, listed in Stassen’s marketing materials as a “previous executive director of the Netcare Group”, made an online payment of R500,000, as part of his R1.5m subscription to the scheme, into Stassmed Pty Ltd’s Nedbank acccount. But a few hours later, Stassen obtained a bank cheque against this account, for R259,000, in favour of Fouché Motors, apparently in payment towards a Mercedes Benz C200 Kompressor.
Stassen: “Do you think someone like Piet Lindeque would be so stupid to just hand me R1.5m if this was a scam? The investors know that I have to live well and there is nothing wrong with paying myself from their investments.” (Some sources believe Lindeque has handed over at least R2m.)
Details concerning Stassen’s expensive lifestyle (like paying marketing manager Lelanie von Weilligh’s rent, and a R450,000 Landrover Discovery for wife Pauline), are revealed in court papers filed in the ongoing divorce case instituted against Stassen by Pauline – for having an affair with Lelanie von Weilligh.
Pauline & Gavin Stassen in happier times with unidentified icy object and friends
Noseweek also spoke to Ronnie Tonkin, whom Stassen lists as “a former general manager of Absa Bank [...] responsible for structuring and planning the Virgin Money Credit Card deal for Southern Africa”. Stassen’s brochure says: “Ronnie has put together Health & Leisure Finance Group for Lifestyle Clinic Complex to aid and facilitate patients financially by offering surgical packages to South African market.”
Contacted by noseweek, Tonkin vehemently denied being part of Stassen’s team: “I am an investor like any other.” He went on to deny knowledge that his name appeared in Stassen’s promotional materials.
Yet two independent sources claim that on an occasion when Stassen spoke to a gathering of prospective investors, including pensioners and school teachers, among those he introduced as “members of the team” was Tonkin – yes; wearing an Absa Bank T-Shirt.
Might Ronnie Tonkin, like others who appear to have “kept faith” with Stassen, be lending just enough support to the scheme to keep the money coming in? Did these “investors” discover the fraud when they had already handed over their cash – and agree to play along in order to ensure some return on their outlay?
Other victims have cut and run, including Dr Cameron Condi, a successful Sandton dentist who paid R150,000 nearly four years ago for a share in the initial Health & Leisure Group Ltd.
Says a resigned Dr Condi: “There is nothing anyone can do. I opened a criminal case with the police three years ago and they did nothing. Commencing a civil proceeding would have been a waste of time as that man has nothing; he took my money and spent it. At least I’m left with my credibility.”
Stassen, who clearly has a tendency to “over-sell”, on one documented occasion seems to have lost his scheme a whole conference room-full of potential victims – and saved some doctors their hard-earned cash – by going way over the top. At a gathering of doctors convened a few years back at a Johannesburg hotel, by a Dr Walton, Stassen undermined his flashy presentation by showing images of a Boeing 737 that he claimed he’d just acquired, and which was being revamped for flying patients to Mauritius. “We are going to offer the patients treatment with class,” he reportedly told the would-be investors.
A doctor who attended the presentation told noseweek: “We may be witless when it comes to matters of business, but it didn’t make sense – why would anyone fly patients to Mauritius in a huge private jet?
The idea was to make more profit than we could in performing the procedures in South Africa – then we spend it on executive flights? It was bull. Dr Walton afterwards contacted us individually, to warn us. He said something wasn’t right and he felt responsible for having convened us. His warning saved at least some of us.”
Perhaps inevitably, there are those who hold on to the dream: Joburg cosmetic dentist Dr L Pepler refused to entertain the idea that he has been suckered (to the tune of R1.5m). He insisted to noseweek that the clinic remains a sound investment: “We had a very successful expo in the UK in October last year, organised by the Cape Town-based Oyster Portfolios and we would be getting more investors from there.” Dr Pepler says he has share certificates showing he owns 4% of “the outfit in Mauritius”.
Is Dr Pepler another of those who may have realised that the only way to salvage their “investments” is to wait it out for new suckers to bite, then collect what they can and run?
Or is he, like a whole lot of others, about to wake up?
Another along in a minute…
What makes a sucker a sucker? It clearly has nothing to do with intellect, or education. According to University of the Western Cape lecturer in clinical psychology Dr Mario Smith, it’s not necessarily an issue of greed. Dr Smith, who has done extensive research into behaviour patterns around fraud, says the gullibility of victims depends in large part on what he calls “the credibility of the plot” – i.e. is the story believable? But the story is believable if you trust the teller of the tale, and one way to gain trust is to associate ourself with other trustworthy people. Dr Smith explains: “Victims respond to who is associated with the schemer. As in [Stassen’s] case, the schemer would rely on the listing of eminent personalities or institutions within his project to gain the confidence of new victims.”
Pointing out that education does not guarantee common sense, Dr Smith also points to factors involved in obtaining an advanced education that may actually interfere with common sense. For example, says Dr Smith, “Doctors may believe they have beaten the odds to make it in medicine – so to some of us, risk-taking is part of life. We may keep taking such risks, in the belief that we will keep winning.”
What of the way that victims “keep faith” with a schemer, even when faced with clear evidence that something is amiss? Dr Smith agrees that it may be too painful or embarrasing to admit the truth: “It’s not even a matter of being in denial, it’s almost like teenage pregnancy: one would continuously hide the fact until the tummy gets too big to hide. Reputations are at stake.”
Out of shame, fraud victims often convince themselves that they are helping to salvage a sinking ship, says Dr Smith. Confronted with evidence that the ship has already sunk, they quickly revert to the scheme’s mastermind for an explanation: “At that point, any explanation from the schemer would be acceptable.”
Less educated than thou
Gavin Stassen likes to brag that he’s more successful than former schoolmates who went on to university to qualify as professionals. If success is measured by the calibre of one’s victims, Stassen has indeed enjoyed success.After matriculating in 1985, he joined the Department of Health Services and Welfare – where his responsibilities as a clerk apparently included applying the final “APPROVED” stamp to applications for private hospitals.
Gavin Stassen
In 1989 his experience in the state health services won him an invitation from Dr Jackie Shevel to join him as co-partner in Stassmed Hospital Consultants cc, formed to advise developers on the specifications required for private hospitals. After Stassen and Shevel parted ways a few years later, he and wife Pauline moved to Cape Town – only to leave in a hurry some months later, to avoid, it’s claimed, unpaid rent bills.
From a townhouse in Centurion, Pretoria, Stassen began demonstrating a new entrepreneurial flare. In December 2003, he wrote, as Stassmed Hospital Consultants, and purportedly on behalf of (the unregistered) “Matrix Dental Laboratories (Pty) Ltd: BEE”, to the registrar of the SA Dental Technicians Council, Mr Lekitima: “It has come to our attention that, of the total number of registered laboratories, only seven are owned by black technicians. Furthermore, we are under the impression that there are only a handful of black technicians registered with your council.
“My consortium is prepared to make the necessary funds available to change the status quo that exists in the market, and to effect the necessary transformation of the industry.”
The proposal was not taken up, and Stassen began promoting the cosmetic clinic venture the folowing year.
It would appear that an extra-marital affair with his marketing director, Lelanie von Weilligh, led to Stassen’s downfall. It seems that wife Pauline, who was apparently well aware that the clinic venture was a scam, learned of the affair – and, angry that funds were being diverted to paying for, inter alia, Lelanie’s apartment, she began undermining husband Gavin’s credibility. Suddenly, investors – potential and current – began receiving anonymous communications warning them that their investments weren’t safe. They were also warned that Stassen did not, as claimed in his CV, hold a BLC (Law) degree from Pretoria University.
Failure of blacks to take andvantage of their political power is reflected as success of the Afrikaner.
http://www.news24.com/Content/Columnists/ClemSunter/1329/79006789376740d39cb74dc02840efc7/24-03-2010-01-10/The_economic_liberation_of_Afrikaners
What is the point you are making, Gwebecimele?
Onkruid vergaan nie? That it is hard to keep a good man down?
Or, is it your old gripe again? The idea of a zero-sum total, a finite pie? If Afrikaners are doing well, it has to be because blacks are losing out, you are just not quite sure yet where, how or what?
@ Brett
Who is the good man? Afrikaner. We have been subjected to their good deeds during apartheid.
Still riding on the ill-gotten benefits of apartheid and the rest of us must wait for the pie to grow. That is very wise from the beneficiaries.
Gwebecimele, I despair about you and abstracts like growth.
Whether you realise it or not, the keyword in your plaintive wail was ‘wait’. As in ‘the rest of us must wait’.
To the rest of us, the lesson in Clem Sunter’s inspirational piece was about people who did not ‘wait’.
Want to ‘wait’ for food aid gifted from the people of Great Britain to the starving people of South Africa?
@ Brett
IF growth creates new money why did capitalists/govt took the taxpayers money to save banks? Why did we not wait for this growth especially under recession to create new money?
This more complicated than guns. While we are at it, may be we should compensate gun owners from growth.
Perhaps because those tax-and-spend democrats (the Clintonistas, Robert Rubin & Co) are largely responsible for the sub-prime lending crisis? By putting pressure on banks to lend money to people who should never have got mortgages in the first place?
@ Brett
Thats what happens when you create/spend money that does not exist. Economic Growth(new money) is not a simple straight foward matter as you might think. You must rob PeTER to pay Paul at various levels Continent, country, coporate up to an individual.
Fundamentally, I agree. Putting pressure on the banks to lend money to the poor – sub-prime mortgages – when they could never afford to pay for a house, was robbing Peter to pay to Paul.
Kurt Richeburg predicted this all long ago. He said the only real engine for growth is spending on infrastructure.
Wait! If those are the criteria, have you not advocated robbing Peter to pay Paul many, many times?
Do I have you wrong when you talk about “Failure of blacks to take andvantage of their political power”? Is what you had in mind not robbing Pieter to pay Paul?
This is just the begining, soon whites will be fairly represented in shacks and taxi ranks.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-26-tough-times-for-white-south-african-squatters
I am not celebrating poverty but if we promote it like we do then it should be evenly distributed.
@ Brett
http://www.citypress.co.za/Content/Business/News/2205/8185fc754cc74f859830c58c49d616c6/28-03-2010-01-00/Blacks_own_less_than_2_of_JSE
Equal opportunities my foot
Gwebecimele says:
March 9, 2010 at 15:03 pm
@ Brett
Look at this company. If it is the one that is being charged for price fixing then it is not suprising. The Employment Equity Commission must visit this company, it really belives in the skills of white males. Check the Executive as well, as a norm one darkie at HR.
http://www.pioneerfoods.co.za/corp_pro/directors.asp
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/pioneer-foods-says-sorry-to-consumers-2010-03-29
White males at it again.
Gwebecimele, I do not know what is happening to my people.
I fear at least one crime a day is being committed by a white person!
Sies!
Hi
Where can I get a nice document on the reasons for affirmative action failing in south africa so I can digest it. I am a white middle-aged single female so I know that past transgressions not of my making or even participation are affecting future progress of my children. Where does it end and where does it begin – you know the sins of the fathers are visited on the children – but why the grandchildren and the greatgrandchildren … is there any sunset clause to affirmative action. It is as bad as the Holocaust – forever remembered.
Invitation: Online debate on India -Brazil- South Africa (IBSA) Policy Dialogue Forum
In partnership with the Ideas for Development blog, the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) is launching an online debate that will contribute with inputs for the forthcoming IBSA Academic Forum, which will be hosted by IPC-IG on 12-13 April in Brasilia , Brazil .
We invite you to participate in this discussion and reflect about the following issues:
- What is the role of the emerging countries in shaping world politics?
- How can India , Brazil and South Africa strengthen cooperation in key issues on the global agenda?
- In which ways an improved policy dialogue among developing countries can contribute to the implementation of effective policies towards the achievement of inclusive growth and human development?
Join us at: http://www.ideas4development.org
We also invite you to visit the IBSA Academic Forum website, where you can find interesting papers, resources and breaking news. Visit: http://www.ipc-undp.org/ibsa
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292679?oid=483272&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226
Judge Vuka Tshabalala’s daughter suffered the same fate at her company L’Oreal.
Hopefully soon people will be fired for sabotaging AA.
http://www.citypress.co.za/Business/News/Ramaphosa-drawn-into-IS-race-row-20100508
Rainbow nation bursting at the seams.
Our equal society according to DA
http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Letters/BEE-stats-a-complete-shocker-20100802
Whatever! Why should we care about 269 CEO positions?
Another pre-occupation of the petit-bourgeoisie and the wannabes!
How many small businesses have started up since we started obsessing about BEE? How many have been destroyed by it?
Not good enough for public service but a star to the private sector.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=116790
@ Brett
Those 269 CEO’s control millions of jobs, pensions etc. They can also make or break the SMME you are talking about.
I thought you would have connected the dots.
Uh-uh!
The focus has been on the wrong end of the marketplace too long.
Why? Because everyone in the ANC aspires to be CEO of Anglo.
It has to stop.
Gwebecimele says:
August 2, 2010 at 9:06 am
Hey Gwebs,
Here’s more.
“Transformation in the workplace remains very slow, the 10th Commission of Employment Equity Report released on Thursday says.
The report shows that 10 years after the introduction of the Employment Equity Act, whites continue to dominate at nearly every occupational level, particularly at the middle to upper ones.
The report says white women still benefit the most from affirmative action measures, while people with disabilities and African and coloured women have benefited the least.
“Employers have a tendency to recruit and promote more males than females at their workplaces,” the report says. “The representation of the other designated groups at the various levels would have been much more equitable if employers had made a concerted effort to capitalise on recruitment and promotion opportunities by proportionally distributing them according to population size.”
Employers tend to provide whites at the higher levels with more training opportunities than other groups, the report says. “The disproportionate representation of training opportunities for the black group impacts negatively on employment equity,” it notes.
http://za.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-30-minister-talks-tough-on-equity-targets
THESE GUYS DESERVE AN AWARD FOR CREATIVE REPORTING. THEY LIMIT THEMSELVES TO PERCENTATGES THAT ARE ARE NOT ACCOMPANIED BY ACTUAL FIGURES. THESE PERCENTAGE INCREASES FROM LOW BASE ARE MISLEADING.
Johannesburg – The representation of white South Africans in the professional sector decreased radically between 1994 and 2008, the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) said on Tuesday.
The number of registrations of white professional engineers decreased by 54.1%, while the number of white attorneys who were admitted between 1999 and 2008 decreased by 36.8%.
By contrast, the number of qualified black South Africans in professions in this sector, including accounting, information technology and the medical industry, rose by between 30% and 507%.
According to Johan Kruger, head of the SRI, the number of black South Africans (Africans, Indians and Coloured South Africans) who are registered with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) increased by 248% between 1994 and 2008.
The number of registrations of black professional engineers increased by more than 111% in the same period.
In the information technology industry the number of black graduates rose by 507.6% between 1996 and 2005.
Furthermore, the number of black medical practitioners increased by more than 30% in three years (between 2007 and 2010) and the number of black attorneys admitted, increased by more than 78% between 1999 and 2008.
These findings form part of the SRI’s fifth report of the SA Transformation Monitor (SAT Monitor). The SAT Monitor is designed to determine the extent to which black South Africans have benefited from black economic empowerment since the start of democracy in South Africa.
Affirmative action inaction…..er, in action…
Forensics
Date: 12 September 2010 07:00
Producer: Peter Groenewald
Presenter: Annika Larsen
Show: Carte Blanche
Over the years, Carte Blanche has done numerous stories on crimes that remain unsolved because of the backlog in processing forensic evidence.
Not much has changed – and many bereaved families still seek answers.
Sandra Tate: ‘It’s hard to bear and it’s just – what can I say? – I mean we just don’t know how she died.’
Charlotte Swanepoel: ‘I asked him, I was absolutely appalled, I said to him, ‘Three years?’ He said ‘Well, there’s a tremendous backlog and that, if I’m lucky, I would get it in approximately three years.”
Eleanor Srot: ‘Oh, no, I was finished, I was angry, I was shocked, I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it.’
Annika Larsen (Carte Blanche presenter) : ‘Forensic evidence – such as DNA, fingerprints, bodily fluids and ballistics all form the building blocks which investigators can use to piece together the puzzle of what really happened at a particular crime scene.’
Sandra: ‘As far as I can see, it is just total incompetence from the side of the pathologist, or not pathologist, the forensic laboratories.’
The death of Johannesburg mother of two, Tana-Leigh Critchfield, has left her family unable to reach closure because of the doubt surrounding her mysterious demise.
Sandra: ‘So I asked her friend, who was very concerned about her, to go and check on her as I was in Cape Town, which she did, and found her dead.’
Sandra was informed by police that she would have to wait up to five years for her daughter’s autopsy results to be released.
Sandra: ‘Well I’m sure that there are many, many sad stories and many people in my position. Uh, our hands are tied, aren’t we? There’s just nothing we can do, or if there was anything we could do I’m sure we would have all done it.’
A recent report by the Auditor General shows there are still severe backlogs in the processing of forensic samples at the Department of Health Forensic Chemistry Laboratories, and at the Police’s Forensic Science Laboratories.
An estimated 23 000 forensic samples remain unprocessed.
Media reports have highlighted the negative consequences that racial selection at these labs is having on the processing of forensic evidence.
Rigid affirmative action policies are said to have contributed to these backlogs.
Dr David Klatzow (Private forensic investigator): ‘What I would like to call ‘aggressive affirmative action’. That is the appointment of really unqualified and untrainable staff.’
Dr David Klatzow is a private forensic investigator and acknowledged as a forensic expert.
Dr. Klatzow: ‘The raw material that’s coming into the recruitment centres for the police is poor. But that is compounded by a problem of racial selection, which means that even if the person being interviewed for the job is incompetent, they’re very likely to get the job if they happen to be of the right ethnic group. That spells disaster.’
Alice: ‘She was lying with her eyes open. Then I took her fringe out of her face to see if it is my daughter.’
21-year-old model Lizel Polley was found brutally murdered in the bathroom of her home in January 2007. Her case remains unsolved.
Her mother Alice has yet to receive the official autopsy results.
Annika: ‘How long did it take for you to get your daughter’s autopsy results?’
Alice: ‘Look I’ve asked them quite a few times, ‘Why can’t I have a copy of the autopsy report?’ And they said because of a murder case it should be in the police in the docket. I’m not allowed to have it; it took them three years and three months to tell me – more or less – what she died of.’
Dianne Kohler-Barnard (DA Shadow Minister of Police): ‘Of course they fall under two different divisions. We have the blood test for example for drunken drivers; they all fall under the health ministry. And then we have samples from rapes, murder cases, etc, they fall under police. So we have two different lots, but frankly one is as bad as the other.’
The Democratic Alliance’s Dianne Kohler-Barnard is at the helm of establishing ways to eradicate forensic backlogs, and what she believes is the incompetence of laboratory staff.
Dianne: ‘It’s extremely difficult for any unit to function when your core of expertise is literally driven out. If they’re told, ‘No, but you’re a white person, or no, no, no, you’re an Indian person, you will never be promoted here,’ they become disheartened and they leave.
Because there is often no forensic evidence available to assist investigations, cases are often thrown out of court. As a result, suspected criminals are released.
Sandra: ‘As far as the police are concerned, I’m very angry about the way they handled this because I don’t feel that they did a proper and full investigation on the matter at all.’
Dianne: ‘The forensic laboratories have been a problem for a long time. Not one of the forensic laboratories in this country is registered, they’re not accredited, in fact I’m waiting for some clever lawyer to go to court and say, ‘I reject all of this evidence because it’s not from accredited labs.”
The Auditor-General’s report, and information provided by the DA have revealed the severity of the backlogs at forensic facilities.
Between June 2007 and June 2009, the backlog in samples at the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratories increased by 330%.
Department of Health Chemistry sample backlogs were up 295%, and the backlog of Scientific Analysis samples increased by 370%.
Eleanor: ‘The first tests the results came back and they told us, um, there were drugs. It was from a like drug overdose. And the drugs that were mentioned are those that are used for people who suffer from Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.’
Eleanor and Irving Srot still cannot come to terms with the sudden death of their 19-year-old son Darren. To make matters worse, his toxicology results were mixed up with those of a woman.
Eleanor: ‘At 4 o’ clock in the morning he came home with his friend, Dale, and Dale came into the flat and shouted for me to come because Darren had collapsed outside. And I went outside and I shouted for the neighbour, in fact I was trying to do CPR on him.’
Irving Srot: ‘I couldn’t believe the results. I then decided to find out about a private laboratory. About ten days later they sent me a written report to state that his blood sample did not match the urine sample and they were from two different people.’
Eleanor: ‘It was that of a different sex; it was that of a woman. And I freaked out completely. I actually said to this gentleman, ‘If you gave us those results, what results were given to that woman’s family?’ And he couldn’t answer.’
Annika: ‘This is the site of a new forensic facility that’s being built in Plattekloof in the Western Cape at a cost of R359-million. Facilities like this are responsible for the processing vital evidence which is later presented in criminal cases such as murder, rape and theft.’
This facility could at least help ease forensic backlogs in the Western Cape.
But it’s hardly likely to be an effective solution to the nationwide problem.
Dianne: ‘Well I think the impact of the backlog is just felt throughout the country. We have people who are really fighting to get court cases through the system and frankly the backlogs in courts matches the backlog. If you look at the forensic laboratory in Johannesburg the backlog is 23000 cases… samples.’
Charlotte Swanepoel’s son Danzell died mysteriously in June last year.
Charlotte: ‘It was just said that ER24 on arrival said that he had died and he was with his friends on the backseat of their car and according to them, he had choked to death. Well when it was taken to the police mortuary in Pretoria, we were actually told that the body had been frozen and it was another three or four days before the actual forensics and the autopsy could be done, but that the actual results would take approximately three years.’
Annika: ‘Would having an official cause of death make closure a little easier for you?’
Charlotte: ‘Eventually I just gave up. I just gave up and just accepted that my child is my only son and my only child, and that he has passed, he has gone, and I just need to accept that. And the closure and the reasons for it I have not been privileged to have.’
Annika: ‘Carte Blanche made numerous attempts to contact the Divisional Head of the SAPS Forensic Laboratory in Pretoria, Mr Pierre Botha, but to no avail. We’ve also made dozens of calls to General Edward Ngoka at the same unit – our calls were never returned.’
Dr Klatzow: ‘If the government was serious about fighting crime, they would do something, they would take some advice about how to run their labs, they would ditch these unbelievably foolish affirmative action policies, and they would make certain that people are put into positions to do the work based purely on qualifications and ability.’
All that the families of Darren Srot, Lizel Polley, Tana-Leigh Critchfield and Danzell Swanepoel can do is wait, but unless something concrete is done to ease forensic backlogs, they may never get the answers they want.
Eleanor: ‘You must always investigate if you know, you’ve got that instinct, that you know that couldn’t have been. You must go out there and investigate it, don’t just sit back and accept it.’
More Affirmative Action success stories:
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=120993
SABC board explains suspension of CEO
SABC claims it would face a cash crunch had the board not taken over the drawing up of a turnaround plan.
CHANTELLE BENJAMIN
Published: 2010/09/15 06:17:37 AM
THE SABC board has justified its decision to suspend CEO Solly Mokoetle, saying in a submission to Parliament that the broadcaster would face a cash crunch had the board not taken over the drawing up of a turnaround plan.
In a document presented to the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications, the board, excluding its chairman Ben Ngubane, said the broadcaster would not be able to meet its first R150m debt repayment to Nedbank in February 2012 unless a “turnaround strategy is developed and implemented in the next three to four months”.
It warned that the government may “still be required to honour its guarantee and cover a new deficit” because of delays in carrying out the turnaround plan.
The board said it had suspended Mr Mokoetle; taken over the drawing up of a turnaround strategy (which was Mr Mokoetle’s job); and highlighted the divide between the board and its chairman, Mr Ngubane, to prevent the “escalation of (a) crisis which manifested itself in the 2008 to 2009 financial year”.
In that period, CEO Dali Mpofu was suspended over his poor performance, the previous board was dissolved and the SABC reported a R1bn deficit.
The interim SABC board had secured a guarantee for a R1,473bn loan from the Treasury on the understanding that a R1bn loan would be raised from Nedbank, and the remaining R473m would become available once the SABC had satisfied the Treasury’s requirements, including a revenue strategy and reduction of the wage bill. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has become increasingly anxious about the SABC’s ability to meet the loan deadlines.
The board said between 2003 and last year, expenditure had shifted from radio and TV content to administrative costs. Between 2005 and last year the head count increased 29%, but the wage bill increased 128%.
Kate Skinner, spokeswoman of the Save Our SABC Coalition, yesterday praised the board for taking action. The Democratic Alliance yesterday called for President Jacob Zuma to discipline Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda for asking the board to review the appointment of acting CEO Robin Nicholson, saying he had exceeded his authority.