DA plays dangerous game

The DA has not rejected race-based policy, and your correspondent James Cunningham in DA sees Light on BEE (February 12) is wrong that Deng s dictum applies. The DA has stated that race is a proxy for disadvantage and race must therefore be the basis of policy, although it adds that it will apply the policy more effectively than the ANC.

The DA dictum is something along the lines of it matters that the cat is black and we hope it will still catch mice a message that for lack of conviction recalls the separate development with justice mantra of the United Party.

Cunningham correctly observes that wherever race-based policy has been applied, it has led to economic and political misery. You do not need a proxy to determine disadvantage because disadvantage itself can easily be determined. Even if you were to insist on a proxy, then unemployment or the level of education attained by a person s parents would far more accurately divide the country along lines of advantage and disadvantage than the crude application of race.

We have long argued that empowerment policy should be based on the actual disadvantage suffered by the beneficiaries of the policy. Nothing would better ensure that the policy served its intended purpose. But the DA knows all of this and the reason it has chosen instead to settle on race as a proxy is not moral conviction or a sincere commitment to social justice, but rather that it hopes for some short-term political advantage to accrue if it dabbles a bit in racial nationalist populism. It is a very dangerous thing to do.

Frans Cronje CEO, Institute of Race Relations