Indians deserve protection as a minority community
AFRIFORUM has recently taken a firm stance against racist comments made by the Economic Freedom Fighters in KwaZulu-Natal.
These comments were directed particularly at Indian people.
During the EFF’s anniversary celebrations, their commander-in-chief, Julius Malema, stated: “Here in Durban, here in KZN, everything strategic is given to Indians… every big tender… they are the ones who own everything. We are saying share with our people. They are ill-treating our people. This is not anti-Indian, it’s the truth, they must treat our people properly.”
Responding to public criticism, spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi issued a press statement claiming that the EFF was standing firmly behind Malema and added that Indians thought that they were better than black people and this was manifested in the way that they acted toward black people.
AfriForum subsequently submitted charges of racism and discrimination against the EFF as an organisation, as well as Malema and Ndlozi as individuals, to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). In the charges, AfriForum argues that the EFF’s conduct is a transgression of the provisions regarding discrimination as contained in the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000 (Act No 4 of 2000).
AfriForum is founded on the protection of the rights of minorities.
Our founding document, the Civil Rights Charter, states that “we invoke internationally recognised principles regarding minority rights, as contained in a series of international conventions and declarations. These policies are not dependent on the policies or goodwill of governments or authorities, but are rights that enjoy widespread international recognition.”
Indian people are also a minority group and, in this case, are particularly being targeted as a community by the EFF.
The EFF is clearly driving a populistic agenda in which racism against minorities is incited in an attempt to mobilise support.
One of the barriers in the protection of minority rights is the notion that minority communities, who are in general more wealthy than the average citizen of the state in which they find themselves, are perceived to be “economically dominant” and consequentially either do not comply with the definition of minorities or do not have a claim for the protection of their rights as minority groups.
This is a fraudulent claim and speaks of a lack of understanding of minority rights law.
Firstly, the claim is based on the proposed definition for minority communities, as put forth by Francesco Capotorti in 1977.
Capotorti, a former special rapporteur for the UN, proposed the following definition for minorities: A group, numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a state, in a non-dominant position, whose members – being nationals of the state – possess ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from those of the rest of the population and show, if only implicitly, a sense of solidarity directed towards preserving their culture, traditions, religion or language.
In South Africa the argument is sometimes put forward that Indian people (or white people, for that matter) do not comply with this definition because their community is not “nondominant”.
The argument is that Indian people have more wealth and are consequentially assumed to be dominant.
It is true that Indian people are on average wealthier than the average South African.
A recent report on living conditions of households by Statistics South Africa found that the average income in South Africa is approximately R138 168 per year, while the average white South African earns R444 446 per year and the average Indian/Asian South African R271 621 per year.
The average black South African earns R92 983 per year.
The conclusion that minorities who earn more than the average are in fact not minorities speaks of a lack of understanding of international law, however.
The term “dominant” doesn’t only refer to economic circumstances, but also to social, cultural and political factors.
If economic factors were considered exclusively, it would effectively mean that most of the communities that were the victims of genocide or ethnic cleansing during the 20th century would not have qualified for protection as a minority community.
These include the Jews in Germany, the Armenians and Greeks in Anatolia, the Muslims in Serbia and the Tutsis in Rwanda.
It is precisely for this reason that the UN Working Group on Minorities declared in 2002 that minority status is not dependent on poverty. It states: “To be clear, minority status and poverty are not co-terminus; in fact membership in a strong, cohesive minority community may even improve the economic prospects of minorities because of factors such as solidarity, communal ownership of goods and wealth, or the psychological benefits of taking pride in one’s ethnic, religious, cultural or linguistic identity.
“It is also sometimes the case that minority communities are economically dominant (for example, because of specialisation in certain fields of employment), while still being denied a range of human rights, in particular access to political power and protection from discrimination.”
The UN Development Programme further explains that the important factors to be considered in this regard should place emphasis on protection, access to power and vulnerability to exclusion.
The document continues: “For example, numerical minorities in a dominant position might quickly become non-dominant when a regime changes and they find themselves subject to discrimination. Economically dominant minorities could be simultaneously politically or socially excluded.”
Therefore, access to power must be assessed in a disaggregated manner to identify non-dominance and vulnerability in different spheres. It is thus clear that Indian people are a minority group and should receive protection as a minority group, particularly when they are targeted by populist political leaders who target them for political purposes.