Good education better than quotas
LAST week, the Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, primate of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa, warned against what he called the “Zulufication” of SA.
He was speaking when receiving a luminary award from the Free Market Foundation for integrity and leadership. Makgoba said one should avoid being “hit on the head like cockroaches”, a reference to the Hutu campaign of violence against Rwandan Tutsis in 1994 which resulted in the mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people. (Tutsis were likened to cockroaches in propaganda before the massacres.)
Makgoba was responding to a questioner who asked what redress is available to those who are historically disadvantaged but who are destined to be permanently disadvantaged unless they can demonstrate they are members of the African National Congress (ANC). There appears, said the questioner, to be no institutional channel for correction. Though he didn’t say as much, Makgoba in effect agreed.
This raises a multitude of issues. For example, those entering universities for their first year of tertiary education next year were likely born into a democratically free SA. Why do they continue to qualify as “previously disadvantaged”?
What is the new justification? Is it that governments since 1994 haven’t been able to rectify problems created by years under the apartheid regime? Or that ANC governments have comprehensively stuffed up the already dreadful education system, thereby entrenching those struggling with poverty and appalling education as forever qualifying as “currently disadvantaged”?
If that is the case, then our universities must take note and amend their racial selection policies accordingly. They are going to need to apply a form of “means” test. For example, students who wrote the matriculation examination set by the Independent Examinations Board should be treated differently — not necessarily preferentially. Increasing numbers of black South Africans are presenting with this qualification.
Those who have written the state’s National Senior Certificate (NSC) will have to supply a lot more information. What school did they attend? Where did they do their homework? Did they have access to electricity? I can go on but I’m sure I don’t need to. The genuinely disadvantaged need to be catered for — but that should no longer mean a blank cheque.
A black student, for example, who presents with, say, a 60% aggregate for the NSC and who handled his homework and literature reading by candlelight, or was taught under a tree, or in classrooms without facilities, is exactly the kind of individual who needs to be nurtured and encouraged and given every possible opportunity.
This commentary applies similarly to the black economic empowerment (BEE) programme.
“At some point,” Department of Trade and Industry director-general Lionel October told the parliamentary committee on trade and industry, “there will probably have to be a ‘sunset clause’ for this. We can’t go on (with it) forever. Maybe there should be timelines or clear objectives, say by 2020 or 2025, as we can’t go on with this BBBEE (broadbased BEE) story forever.”
The response was a fudge, and looking at the notes I have the sense that what October said didn’t exactly resonate with the majority. And the department promptly rushed out a statement to the effect that a BEE sunset clause wasn’t imminent.
All this leads me to the Democratic Alliance (DA). It is doing exactly what Prof Hermann Giliomee warned it not to — playing on the ANC’s pitch. It has swallowed this BBBEE story hook, line and sinker. If the DA is to stay true to its founding principles it cannot buy into policies that are overtly racist. SA is now a democracy, and if it is to be a true democracy there’s space only for equal opportunity for everyone. Racial policies and equal opportunity do not sit in the same room.
The argument that BEE will square the economic circle is codswallop.
All it does is hand undue advantage to a tiny minority paid for by shareholders — in reality it’s no different from the National Party’s own BEE policy, Broederbond Economic Empowerment, which similarly did little to advance the middle class.
Everyone’s looking for a quick fix. It’s a phantasmagoria. What matters is really good education.