Acting in the best interests of South Africa

Transformation addresses the cruellest form of racism and exploitation, which will take generations to overcome

VIRTUALLY everywhere in the world today there is a demand for greater equality among ethnic groups. Economically and educationally disadvantaged ethnic groups are demanding government intervention to redress past inequalities.

But in addressing these demands through programmes such as affirmative action, reservations or compensatory discrimination, the global concern for distributive justice to eliminate inequalities is often fraught with many difficulties and plaintiff cries of reverse discrimination.

Affirmative action or positive discrimination has always been a critical issue in most societies that have adopted its principles. Known as employment equity in Canada, reservation in India and Nepal, and positive action in the UK, it is the policy of favouring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer from discrimination within a culture or society.

The intention is a good and noble one based on moral principles of justice. In my lifetime, I have been at both ends of the receiving line in so far as affirmative action is concerned. Growing up as a so-called “non-European” meant being sidelined in mainstream society.

The Nationalist government was hell-bent on lifting up and improving the plight of the Afrikaner people. In a short period of time, the Afrikaner working class rose to great heights using the opportunities that were open to them through business, banking and other parastatals.

Under the Separate Universities Act, jobs were provided for Afrikaner academics and administrators to run the Universities for African, Indian and coloured students. I was a product of the tribal college and experienced first-hand the incompetence of third-rate lecturers under whom we received an apartheid education. Compensation for this impoverishment came from a good family background and from an education overseas.

When I returned to South Africa, I couldn’t find a job with all my degrees in an open university. Instead what awaited me was a temporary junior lectureship with few promotional opportunities. At the end of seven years of temporary employment with no pension or other benefits, I lost my job and couldn’t sell my labour at any other institution.

I took the university to court and lost hopelessly when the judgment was made that as a married woman, I was a temporary member of staff and the university could hire and fire whoever it pleased as it was a business.

In the Tricameral Parliament Ray Swart, the PFP member, asked about racial employment statistics and found that in almost every case Afrikaner academics were promoted above Indians, although their qualifications may not have been as good.

He also noted that married women could only be employed on a temporary basis and that the salary scale was racially skewed in favour of whites, who were granted an additional inconvenience allowance for teaching at black institutions.

I battled through a mire of hopelessness and personal defeat.

My students were my only solace as they lobbied to reinstate a popular lecturer. I sought refuge in private practice and later, as the call for affirmative action grew, I found a job in the Student Counselling Centre of the University of Natal.

Previous attempts to enter this hallowed institution had been barred. Had it not been for affirmative action, I may not have been appointed as the first black dean of student development.

My siblings before this had no marital ties to keep them in the country with limited racial opportunities.

Instead, Canada claimed a professor of sociology with a dedicated chair in multicultural education in Kogila Adam Moodley, and Subithra Moodley Moore held an academic position at the University of Seattle in political science. My brother made good as an entrepreneurial denturist in Colorado.

Vigour

For blacks, 21 years is not such a great window of opportunity to level the playing fields. If we had to take into account the social and political ravages that faced them as a people, the progress made is remarkable.

I often marvelled at the vigour of political debate that took place at senate and faculty board meetings by articulate students – the sons and daughters of domestic workers raised in fatherless homes with multiple siblings, yet they forged ahead.

It is important to view the problem in a context of years of inequality and institutional oppression.

Without transformation, how is it possible for the mass of black children growing up in townships and rural areas without parents and families to make any headway?

They have been the victims of the cruellest form of racism and unspeakable exploitation that will take generations to overcome.

The struggle of black people in South Africa is not only one of political oppression, but one of mental oppression. Menticide is perhaps the cruellest form of oppression.

In our case, how many missed opportunities were lost to people of colour just because of their race? How many potential little Einsteins and Mozarts have we lost by virtue of not being able to recognise, address and support their genius?

In essential ways, South Africans are experiencing the effects of transformation both positively and negatively. There are those who are the direct beneficiaries of privileges denied to them in the past and those who have had to relinquish their status and privileges accorded to them on the basis of race.

Wherever we may be in the receiving line, one thing is clear – transformation is essential and it is good.

It is about acting in the best interests of South Africa as a nation.