Black Management Forum creates animosity - "Reverse Rasicm"

It is sometimes confusing to the ordinary South Africans when the word Discrimination and Racism are used especially by Business people, Government officials and Organized group(s) and or Trade Unions in the everyday life.

According to Wikipedia.org, reverse racism is a term expressed to be the persecution of any group perceived to have power even in instances when this is a distortion of facts. Reverse Racism should be delineated from affirmative action goals. Affirmative action is a goal to conduct racist free hiring and education, and reverse racism is the active persecution of a person based on imagined power or progeny.

Many people especially the "previously advantaged groups or individuals" which in this case are white people believe that Affirmative Action is just a reverse discrimination of racism against them and on the other hand the "historically disadvantaged group(s) or individual(s)" believe that Affirmative Action laws are good for the country.

Recently, South African Press Association reported that Black Management Forum, one of South Africa's organized group said on Tuesday that white women should be struck off a list of groups recognized as previously disadvantaged in terms of the employment equity legislation.

This is after The Commission for Employment Equity reported that "too many white women" were represented, Finweek.co.za reported on the 15 May 2007.

The Commissioner's Chairperson, Jimmy Manyi said that white women were overrepresented. Manyi singled out statistics on white women in particular, saying that there was "serious over-representation" of white women in top management positions.

This was because of what he said was an "inherent and ingrained" racism among bosses that favoured the promotion of white women above black individuals.

Using the "economically active population" as a measurement, the Commission on Employment Equity found that the percentage of blacks in top management positions increased by a "meagre" 9.5% between 2000 and 2006.

Of this broad group, Africans in top management increased by a "lousy" 5.1% over this period, to 11.3%, while Coloureds increased by 2% to 4.7%.

To properly reflect the country's demographics within the economically active population, the number of Africans in top management positions would need to be six times higher, Manyi charged.

Indians increased by 2.4% to 6.2%, while white women in top management increased by 4.5% to 14.7% - an increase, said Manyi, of "more than three times" above what he indicated would be a reasonable demographic expectation of 5.5% representation, http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/default/display_article.aspx?Nav=ns&ArticleID=1518-1786_2113599

Witbooi, a respondent to this report on Finweek web site said that " Govt: Were not anti-white. Oh my goodness now I have heard it all. HA HA HA HA Choke! Hey Mr.G we whites are not part of your gullible masses who believe in all the drivel you dish up.You are totally and completely anti- white. You are the biggest racists in this country. You do not fool us. Read the news daily man. Latest is that we must declare what RACE we are when purchasing property. Now who is practicing apartheid? Apartheid has not died but is alive and well under the ANC Government!! YOU ARE ANTI-WHITE!"

Niel, also a respondent said that he's a white male in his mid 20's and is currently disadvantaged. The last time and the time before he was looking for a job he was turned down many time simply because of his colour and his sex. He further said that Mdladlana’s comment of “We want this country to be non-racial” is almost laughable.

“Oh there are too many of this colour, not enough of these” this is based entirely on race and gender. How about we do something that has never been done before in this country? He urged that people be selected based on merit and merit alone. Only then will our society be “non-racial,” said Niel.

This indicates that having to exclude white women from the employment equity legislation will even create more animosity than there already is between the black and white individual(s) or group(s).

No matter what we do - there will always be imbalances even if ten policies are created to curb such imbalances.

Are we then going to formulate a policy than will ensure that there is no animosity between all South Africans instead of just applying the logic to all this?

Well, may be this is just another way of discriminating who knows.

But one thing for sure I've learned from all this and know for sure is that: We were born unequal, we are not equal, we will never be equal and we will die such.

We just have to live with it.