millions of people to show their true mettle. In this way, it would in time be possible to achieve a non-racial democracy in which inequality would no longer be linked to race and people could truly regard themselves ‘simply as South Africans … on a colour-blind basis’.7
Affirmative action, the ANC went on, would ‘mainly’ take the form of correcting past injustice through the application of ‘normal and non-controversial principles of good government’. However, there would also have to be special measures to bar racial discrimination; bring about ‘balance in the armed forces, the police, and the civil service’; and ensure that the workforce as a whole became ‘representative of the talents and skills of the whole population’.8
Black economic empowerment would also be needed, as black people had been barred from ‘the ownership of capital and the decision-making power that goes with it’. Hence, ‘when racist economic laws were repealed, black people had neither land to serve as collateral, nor capital for investment, nor meaningful sources of credit. Nothing was less free in South Africa than enterprise’. BEE was thus required to remove ‘all the obstacles to the development of black entrepreneurial capacity’ and unleash ‘the full potential of all South Africans to contribute to wealth creation’. At the same time, the ANC would ensure that the state did not become ‘an instrument of racially-based extortion and patronage in which friends were favoured, opponents disadvantaged, and bribes accepted’.9
Affirmative action would also be needed to rectify land ownership. ‘Property rights will never be secure as long as the majority believes that existing title has been achieved through wrong rather than right.’ Hence, unless there was rapid land reform, ‘any future economic development would be precarious’. This meant that ‘an active policy of restoring usurped land rights’ would have to be followed, in which land would be made available for housing, as well as to those who wished to farm. Affirmative action in this area would seek to balance the need for appropriate compensation against the importance of affordability.10
Overall, said the ANC, affirmative action offered ‘millions of South Africans … the long overdue chance to come into their own and start enjoying the good things the country has to offer’. However, ‘direct and vocal criticism’ of the policy was now being voiced by those who had ‘benefited from privilege in the past’ and who ‘claimed that affirmative action denied the merit principle … and involved undue state interference in the economy’. These criticisms were unfounded, it said. However, as earlier noted, the ANC also acknowledged that much would depend on how affirmative action was implemented in practice, saying: ‘If well handled, affirmative action will help bind the nation together and produce benefits for everyone. If badly managed, we will simply redistribute resentment, damage the economy, and destroy social peace.’11
This analysis seemed fair and reasonable, helping to generate widespread support for affirmative action of this kind in employment, enterprise, and land ownership. The ANC’s own warning that affirmative action could ‘damage the economy’ and ‘destroy social peace’ was largely disregarded. In subsequent years, the ruling party’s further reasons for racial transformation laws were also accepted as essential to redress and thus endorsed with little critical scrutiny.
Assumptions underpinning transformation laws
The rationale for racial laws was further articulated in 1997 and 1998, when legislation requiring affirmative action in the workplace (the Employment Equity Act of 1998) was unveiled and then adopted. Much the same reasoning underpins other transformation laws, including BEE requirements. This rationale is thus worth examining in some depth – especially as it rests on a number of assumptions that tend to be accepted at face value, but are in fact flawed or unfounded.
Demographic representivity is the norm
The Employment Equity Act is premised on the assumption that demographic representivity would be evident in every aspect of society if this ‘norm’ were not being undermined and thwarted by racial discrimination. This argument was put forward in 1998 by Firoz Cachalia, an ANC office-bearer in Gauteng, who said: ‘Since ability is randomly distributed among the entire population, black and white South Africans should be represented in the workforce according to their share of the overall population. If whites instead consistently outnumber blacks in management, skilled jobs, and the professions, then for those who reject the idea of superior and inferior races, the only explanation is that white dominance is the result of racial discrimination.’12
Though Cachalia’s view seems superficially convincing, it overlooks relevant differences in human capital as well as variations in other important factors, such as median age. This last factor is also relevant in the United States where, according to US expert in affirmative action, Professor Thomas Sowell, half of all Mexican-Americans are either infants, children or teenagers. By contrast, most high-level occupations require tertiary education and long years of experience and are typically filled by people aged 40 or more. Comparing the number of Mexican-Americans in high-level occupations with the overall size of the Mexican-American population suggests a high degree of ‘under-representation’ of this group at these levels. However, once age is taken into account, the picture changes to the point where such under-representation is no longer evident.13
In South Africa there are also salient differences in age and education levels, which are generally overlooked by proponents of demographic proportionality. In 1999, the year the Employment Equity Act came into operation, Africans accounted for 70% of the economically active population (EAP) at national level – the EAP being defined as all those between the ages of 15 and 64 who work, or wish to work. According to the Act, since Africans made up 70% of the EAP, this meant that they should also constitute 70% of managers in both the public and the private sectors. However, in 1999 only 25% of Africans fell within the 35-64 age bracket generally considered eligible for high-level occupations. In addition, though degrees are often required or advisable for management posts, only 1.5% of the African population then held a tertiary qualification. This meant that the pool of African people from which managers could realistically be drawn was far smaller than the Act assumed.14
Such differences in age and education are sufficient in themselves to preclude white and black South Africans from fanning out into management posts in proportion to each group’s share of the total population. They also help explain why the presumed ‘norm’ of demographic representivity is a myth, rather than a reality, in heterogeneous societies around the world. Writes Sowell: ‘A global perspective makes it clear that the even distribution or proportional representation of groups in occupations and institutions remains an intellectual construct defied in society after society.’
Donald L Horowitz, a professor at Duke University in the United States, adds that ‘few, if any societies, have ever approximated demographic proportionality’. According to Myron Weiner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ‘it is ethnic inequality – rather than the obverse – that is universal’ (emphasis as in the original). Adds Professor Weiner: ‘All multi-ethnic societies exhibit a tendency for ethnic groups to engage in different occupations, have different levels (and, often, types) of education, receive different incomes, and occupy a different place in the social hierarchy.’15
White racism continues to bar black advancement
The Employment Equity Act also rests on the assumption that pervasive white prejudice continues to restrict demand for black managers, especially in the private sector. However, this overlooks the fact that, even in the apartheid era, the National Party government was often unable to prevent white employers from giving skilled jobs to black people in defiance of the laws reserving such jobs for whites. So impractical did it become to enforce job reservation rules that the former government had little choice but to repeal most of them by the end of the 1970s. Even white farmers, who were generally supporters of the apartheid system, used their clout with the government not to strengthen the implementation of job reservation but rather to avoid state intervention in their use of skilled black
