Ethos of transformation

THE National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) has decried advocate Gerhard Visagie’s appointment as the new head of the Special Investigating Unit, arguing that it goes against the transformation ethos the government is preaching. This is a racist and short-sighted call, showing how badly the public sector union understands what transformation and employment equity are about.

What Nehawu misses is that transformation and employment equity are not about wishing away other South Africans and replacing whites in general, and white males in particular, with blacks and women.

Nehawu’s attitude shows it is on one side of the same coin, with one side believing the appointment of a black person is unmerited and the other that the appointment of a white person is anti-transformation.

Its naive and narrow understanding of what employment equity and transformation is places Nehawu on the same side as conservative whites who wrongly believe that these measures, confirmed by the Constitutional Court to be fair and reasonable, are about replacing white racism with black bigotry.

It may very well be that this will turn out to be one of the many disastrous appointments at the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions.

Time will tell. Until then, Visagie’s suitability for the post must be based on his skills set, compared to those he beat for the post.

His skin colour and sex must be the last consideration. If Visagie is an incompetent manager, the union must compile a dossier showing this to be the case, instead of red-lining the appointment purely on the basis of skin colour.

The continued erroneous assumption in South Africa that one need only be black or female to represent transformation must be put out to pasture once and for all.

It is a patently fallacious argument since it is based purely on attributes one is born with rather than attitudes held, particularly with regard to the South Africa most of us are hoping to create, or the efforts of an individual to make a positive contribution in the workplace and society.

With the public sector union still choosing to use apartheid-era language of referring to blacks as “non-whites” – as if the standard humans needed to meet was that of being white rather than being whatever they are – it is no great wonder they hold on to the equally discredited binary of “black is good, white is bad”.