Disadvantaged deserve redress

DUNCAN du Bois’s opinion piece titled “legislating equity has consequences” (Mercury, February 27) refers.

The writer asserts that legislating equity leads to the law of unintended consequences and equity legislation has never succeeded because such attempts cannot prescribe the outcomes.

Well, equity legislation worked wonders for the Afrikaners right here in SA. It reduced a huge socio-economic gap between South Africans of English descent and those of Dutch descent. But it did so at the expense of the people of colour.

Du Bois says that thousands of people are emigrating because of affirmative action. I wonder if there are reliable stats to that effect, where people list equity legislation as a reason for their departure. Can Du Bois also remind us how many people, excluding freedom fighters, left SA because of the affirmative action that was implemented from 1948 to 1994?

The claim that differing degrees of competence are a reality of life ignores the fact that the South African ones are not natural, but just a perpetuation of inequities created by colonisation and apartheid.

The current equity legislation is not aimed at promoting the ideology of race, but is repealing the ideology of race.

I would understand if Du Bois was condemning the abuse of BEE and employment equity policies, not the need for their existence.

Duncan du Bois is yet to tell us how to address the inequality caused by the injustices of the past, if equity legislation is not the way to go.

The previously disadvantaged people deserve redress.

VUSUMUZI GCUMA | Durban