BEE is re-establishing racial classification.

[Dave A]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that thinks we are going about redressing our history the wrong way. I have for some time indicated that measures should be based on economic status indicators rather than returning to racially based discrimination measures which is what caused the problem in the first place.

No less than Dr. Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert has now come out openly challenging that setting racially based measures is actually re-inforcing the divides between races. Full story per IOL here.

South Africa should move away from its "stubborn" obsession with race and focus on the socio-economic backgrounds of people to transform the country, political analyst Frederik van Zyl Slabbert said on Wednesday.

"If you make yourself hostage to a racist past you could budget on a racist future," Slabbert said.

He was speaking at the launch of a report on The Revival Of Racial Classification In Post-Apartheid South Africa, which warned that several new laws and actions taken by government were in essence creating a new system of racial classification.

"Unless government reconsiders its racial consciousness, the political transition of 1994 will be reduced to a mere transition from one racially driven dispensation to yet another racially driven dispensation, under pretext of democracy," said Kallie Kriel, author of the report and chief executive of AfriForum. AfriForum is a civil society discussion forum, which was started by trade union Solidarity.

[Marq]

The subject of BEE and equity related legislation as apartheid in reverse has been waiting in the wings for long time and is a very explosive one.

I think business in general and the opposition have been waiting and hoping that it would die a natural death along the lines of its predecesors. However, it is becoming more and more evident that this will not be the case and the anc are running out of excuses, as time related to previous government extends beyond a period where blame can no longer be shifted to the past. Politicians start to fail big time and blame shifts to current scenarios of business not wanting to play ball with them any more.

It is good that the opposition start this ball rolling as business must be seen to be independent. Big sticks would wave if business shows its muscle too soon.

A little jump to the left in this Rocky Horror Show.

[AndreMorgenrood]

I'm afraid I'm in a terribly negative mood on this one at the moment. I feel like a bystander at a horrible car crash and everything is happening in slow motion, the innertia that has built up to this point is so massive that everybody's just standing there watching the event unfold, powerless to do anything about it.

If this was black people being discriminated against the world would be up in arms with sanctions and who knows what else around the corner. But no, it's the rest of the democratic world's little gemstone, it's little achievement, and they're too shit scared to even IMPLY that our black governments is being even remotely racist.

If I had enough people with balls behind me I'd start an exclusive "White Business Owners Association" as a counterpart to the black version and friggin dare them to say a single word about it. If there is one thing that can make me spit spiders and cave heads in it's this puppy-eyed hurt look black people get when you even as much as think about calling them racist. It's simply not within their understanding that black people can be racist, it just does'nt happen to them.

[Candy Bouwer]

It's simply not within their understanding that black people can be racist, it just does'nt happen to them

. I concur ...the new generation in particular...What has happened to respect for man in general?....do the sins of our "past" eliminate us from being seen or are the rest of the world all colour blind?

[Dave A]

Now that is touching. The captains of both Italy and Ukraine have just given pre-match statements against racism in the lead up to their quarter-final clash.

[entoserv]

Seems it's part of 5 days against discrimination, and the soccer World Cup has decided to focus on racism.

Just as well we did not win the bid to host World Cup 2006. Could have been a bit dodge.

[Alan]

This does make for a interesting stand off though, business on one hand and the goverment on the other. This whole Eskom mess in CT must have rattled a few cages and opened a few eyes, i mean what happened to the skills that were able to look after those reactors, they obviously were not passed on in time. So they now have to import experts to carry out the repair.

[Dave A]

One of the major challenges in all this is that it seems so hard to recognise this as racial discrimination until you are on the receiving end.

I think this article in M&G illustrates the point.

The African National Congress was accused on Wednesday of reintroducing racial categorisation, thereby polarising South African society.

The National Democratic Convention (Nadeco) criticised the ruling party for not regarding coloured people as African.

"This ... is nothing less than racialism and a callous disregard of the massive exploitation and oppression that the brown community in South Africa suffered in the apartheid past," the party said in a statement.

"The mere fact that the ANC tries to categorise those disadvantaged as a result of the past in different groups causes a new form of apartheid in South Africa."

It was a case of "being too black in the past and now being too white", Nadeco said.

The coloured community is distinctly African, it added, and underscored the commitment of the Constitution to non-racialism.

"The next logical step for the ANC will be that they will want to categorise which part of the black community was more disadvantaged than others, creating a massive racial meltdown."

The ANC, Nadeco said, should stop categorising and classifying South African citizens.

It was reacting to a reported statement by ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama that the ANC's strategic objective was to fight for the liberation of black people in general, and the "African" in particular.

"Africans", he said, were treated as third-class citizens in the past while other non-white groups were treated as second-class.

Anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak at the weekend said the ANC had reintroduced the "language of racial categorisation". -- Sapa

The article is enlightening for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the protests are about discrimination against coloured people - not racial discrimination in general.

Until people can see that there is no such thing as "good" racial discrimination, there is little prospect of reversing the growing tide of racial preference and prejudice.