Changing colour in SA
 

Chinese reclassified as 'blacks'... ahem.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7461099.stm

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Oh yes, apartheid is alive and well in South Africa. Legislation being used to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin.

So where are the loud disapproving and threatening comments from the likes of Peter Hain. As long as the white man is the target all is forgiven.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Be fair though the comparison is incorrect. The discrimination against blacks was racial. The current discrimination against whites is enacted through BEE and it is to redress the situation to the previously disadvantaged people.

A wider issue is that for every job you give to the Chinese then it is one you don't give to the Black guy which this process was intended to protect! Annoyingly I don't think that the Chinese were treated badly by the Whites so their grievence is economic and not based on retribution for wrongs.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

In some respects I do agree with certain parts of positive discrumation in South Africa. Some of our friends/colleagues in SA who are ACI have been brought up in extremely difficult circumstances during the apartied era in areas such as the Cape Flats and have done wonders to achieve reasonable school/university results.
This may not have been up to the standards normally set but give these people an upbringing which many white families experienced they would have excelled and they deserved to be seen as equal to those who may have had superior grades but came from a much more privileged background.

This practice is also seen in the UK when children from under-privileged backgrounds are able to go to study certain university courses which their grades were deemed too low to be normally considered.

Nevertheless there are some aspects of BEE which are disturbing. It now seems that in financial services at least, gaining new clients matters less on the skills of the firm, its people et al but rather who is the most BEE compliant in terms of partners/MD's, stock ownership.

Also I have seen first hand on people being promoted to positions of importance too early so that the firm can improve their BEE compliance. These people do not yet have the skills to lead their teams sufficiently and as a consequence of this, many good workers in SA who are better placed for these positions at the time (which SA needs desperately) feel betrayed that they have been overlooked and finally leave for countries such as the UK where they feel more appreciated.

The other question is will BEE end once 'equality' has been reached? I myself doubt it. In Malaysia (a country I know well) a similar form of positive discrimation was brought in on the behalf of the Malay people... however this time they were in the minority and were publicly discrimated against the Indian and Chinese minority populations.
This was brought in 40 years ago (at the time was only meant to be in place for 10 years) and has yet to end as the government continue to conveniently state that equality has not yet been reached.

In terms of the new laws in SA however I do feel that the hand of China has something to do with this new ruling. China is becoming very important in Africa as they offer investment without certain humanitarian conditions which the west often demands in return.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Racial discrimination against whites is justice? Racial discrimination is just that, no matter what the intention. Racial discrimination in the "old" RSA was introduced to protect the poor whites not and therefore not against other race groups?

By international standards any form of discrimination against a person based on colour is evil.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Even if (and I can't say I know the origins of apartied) there were specific reason for the creation for apartied, I think it would be very difficult to argue that what was created evolved into a much more uglier beast.

You could also state that Hitler rose from the conditions set upon the German people after WWI and the severe conditions of the Treaty of Versailles but that doesn't mean that his actions were just. It doesn't mean that he was not responsible for thousands of atrocities and directly caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Everything is relative and to the victor go the spoils.

Let's examine the origins of segregation in South Africa alone. Apartheid is seldom understood but literally means "separate development" which is a more comprehensive policy on how and where people live and work.

The root cause of segregation and job reservation was caused by Britain's greed and avarice. The unjust War launched by Britain against the Boer Republics in 1899 (2nd Anglo-Boer War) was to obtain access the mineral wealth in both countries (mainly gold). The British failed to gain a military advantage against very mobile and astute bush fighters (Boer Commandos) who inflicted very serious casualties on British Forces. The British in frustration built Concentration Camps (so Hitler only copied what his conquerors had created 40 years before) in surrounding territories (Northern Cape and Natal). They interned the wives and children of the Boer Commandos into these Concentration Camps. They had no sanitation, healthcare or any other form of civilised support. Tens of thousands of these women and children died in these camps. Their homes and farms were burnt to the ground. Having gained victory the British walked away leaving the Boer folk to fend for themselves. In the following years most of these displaced families lived in absolute poverty and this created a vast number of people who lacked education or any form of opportunity to improve themselves.

The legacy was (a) a people with deep hatred of the British (which still exists today and who can blame them).
(b) Hundreds of thousands of people who were illiterate and unable to hold down anything but manual labouring jobs.

Following WW2 the Afrikaans people constituted a majority and they realised that they had the political strength to control South Africa and one of the primary objectives of the post War National Party was to ensure that their electorate (the poor whites) were able to work. They introduced legislation similar to BEE to ensure that manual labourers and other tasks such as drivers were given to whites instead of other races.

You once again you filter out only the bad stuff. What Hitler did to the Jews. Genocide perpetrated by anyone is totally unacceptable. But I have just shown you that the British Government perpetrated no less an evil 40 years before. Hitler committed suicide, many of his subordinates were hanged. In the South African context Kitchener was accorded the highest honours of the Land and went on to responsible for bungling many operations in WW1. So it depends which side you're on.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Afrikaners were in the majority..... if you're only looking specifically at 'White' people.
So if The Afrikaners were angry with the British for the way they were themsevles treated...why would they set laws which discriminated against other races...not the British themselves?

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

That was the constitutional setup established by the British at the formation of the Union.

If you have no education and live in poverty then you are not competing with highly educated people for jobs are you? They were competing with Black people for the same jobs. You seem to not understand the fact that the British stripped them of everything. Major business was controlled by British companies.

Despite your extreme concern for what Hitler did, you seem remarkably unconcerned about what the British did.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

... And have you seen the appalling drop-out rates? So now the pressure is on to debase the standards even further, so that the "under-privileged" do not fail.

Attaching labels like "positive" to racism doesn't make it a good thing, it's just Newspeak of the worst kind.

The whole sorry set of terminology is designed by social engineers to mask the reality. The whole absurd policy of "Black Economic Empowerment" and "Transformation" in South Africa corrupts everyone. And now, just as in Orwell's Animal Farm, one's race is decided by fiat.

You are right. It will never, never end. The more Africa fails, the louder the clamour becomes for yet more "transformation". The whole vocabulary of this absurd policy is designed to hide the real problems, and until those problems are faced, they merely grow worse and worse.

If you work hard and make something of yourself, you are "privileged", and your success is merely a result of treading on the backs of the poor (reclassified in the same ludicrous vocabulary as "disadvantaged"). If you are a useless wastrel, then it is not the result of your own laziness, but of "exploitation". And on it goes, a silly sub-Marxist wordgame.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

I don't condone what was done previously. I have had the joy of being lectured many a time by my in-laws on what the British people did to the Afrikaner nation... they are Afrikaners themselves
All I was saying prior to this post was that even if there were specific reasons for creating certain laws doesn't make any less wrong... this at a time when other western nations were handing back power to the indigenous majority holding populations in the former colonies.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

It is such a gift to read these threads from all of you; a deeper understanding of post colonial America is emerging in my mind. And the conflict borne out in your conversations mirrors the still groaning conflict here, between the socialists and conservatives. The difference I fear is in the velocity of the physical degradation of life and commerce within the two, SA and USA.

Tiger has a steel grip on the reality of the situation and it's historical roots in SA it appears. And you're causing me to want to go to the history books. Unfortunately, you would be hard pressed to find the honesty that's right here in your commentary. Instead, I suspect, well-peer reviewed Orwellian offerings would be available on the shelf.

I would like to see more SAn expatriates here in the States, sharing their stories with well fed, inatentive, happy americans in the hope of ringing the alarm.

We can all sit in the cafes arguing social justice til the wee hours in the morning, but when that hankering for a warm crusty baguette comes around, if Rand's producers have all been killed off or scared off the fields they once cultivated, the scene in that cafe is quickly going to turn to the scene we now have in Zimbabwe. And where is the cream for those lattes damn-it?!

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

With all due respect to you, Chango, it is not that I do not care for justice. It is that I do not think that this increasing obsession with skin-colour or race as the defining factor in humanity is just. It leads where it has always led: to conflict and division.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

Quite right Pablo, right on the head. The biggest voice in the US against "affirmative action", what I think is referred here to as "positive discrimination" is Ward Connelly, a black californian. He is a realist, who believes the beat way for individuals to succeed is on their own, without the disparaging liberal government premise that they are inferior to begin with, and requiring a leg up to a level they "could not possibly reach on their own". AA really is insulting at it's core, not to mention socially debilitating.

Re: Changing colour in SA
 

? I did not say it was a justice - I said it was enacted. It is a discrimination and I'm not promoting it.

But I think that the original discrimination was to subjigate and enable theft of gold rather than 'protect' poor whites!