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How South African Blacks Legislate Their Inferiority

Updated on December 9, 2013

Affirmative Action to Redress Apartheid

Nobody can deny the need in South Africa for affirmative action to redress the apartheid ideology. The scope of this article is not to comment on the correctness of the policy of affirmative action - but it can be understood broadly to be apartheid reversed and implemented in a fashion to further black interests, as opposed to white interests. The concept is justified as necessary by many proponents, to correct social and economic imbalances brought about by apartheid, a rather ghastly system that favoured whites in all aspects of economic, political and social interaction, at the expense of indentured black labour.

However conceptually justifiable the principle of affirmative action might be, the manner of its implementation in South Africa is racist in itself and does no favours to the furtherance of black people in that country. It has created a minuscule super-wealthy, black elite for the politically connected, while ordinary black South Africans have been left with unrealistic expectations and nothing more.

Affirmative action favours blacks in daily economic activities, to the extent that large South African retailer, Woolworths, does not even allow applications for certain job opportunities from whites. The same policy was, until recently, implemented by the South African national airline. Their hiring policies and application systems quite categorically and unapologetically exclude whites from even applying for the job.

Understand this clearly. Legislation redressing past imbalances requires that where any position can be filled by an equally qualified and suitable black or white candidate, preference must be given to the black candidate. Some might say this is fair enough, but Woolworths and South African Airlines do not even consider applications from white people for certain positions. Whites, quite literally, need not even apply.

The question that this article explores is: is that not inherently racist? Well known whingers, long on emotion and short on logic, have recently hopped onto the nearest soapbox and begun pontificating using the horrors of apartheid as a justification for its renamed modern equivalent... affirmative action.

South Africans Do Not Want to Compete in a Competitive Economy

Surely, by legislating effective apartheid, South African blacks are tacitly admitting that ability plays no role in the future of their people - rather, the same despicable ideology of "apartheid" that preferences one race over another, has been renamed and packaged in a more palatable form. But any reasonable-minded person is forced to admit the truth. In South Africa, a completely unqualified and unsuitable black candidate will be given a job out of the necessity for fulling that employment position, to the exclusion of a perfectly qualified, available and imminently suitable white candidate.

Frankly, that's disgusting and counter-productive. An economy cannot function on a sustainable basis when jobs are awarded based on skin colour and not ability. Unqualified black economists feel free to throw your arms in the air. Unemployed white economists, deal with reality and make another plan.

Now, for all those who find this fact objectionable, please do not read further because your reluctance to admit the truth is only going to make you feel ever more uncomfortable.

Do Whites Have the Right to be Angry?

Of course they do! Equally, blacks have that right after decades of mistreatment.

The problem, again, comes in with the unpalatable truth. South African blacks were living the simplistic lives of nomadic tribesman before whites arrived and yet, they feel a sense of entitlement to all that the white man brought to Africa. German luxury motor vehicles, tailored suits, Swiss chronometers (that's watches, to the rest of us), American pop-culture, Chinese financial investment and cheap black labour.

The unpalatable truth is not problematic in and of itself. It is problematic because the system is not sustainable. No system of legislated racial dominance can prevail over the greater realities of economics and Darwinism - survival of the fittest.

This means that the weaker of the species will be purged by natural processes. The slower antelope will become the dinner of predators; the mentally less agile will become the victims of their own mentality or the strength of others. The South African government is actively seeking to make the vast majority of its population mentally lazy by rewarding an attitude of entitlement, rather than rewarding an attitude of application.

A strong mentor will always nurture application in her students and discourage a sense of entitlement.

By application, I mean that those striving to move forward in their lives should seek to improve their circumstances by increasing their knowledge and experience within a field, making themselves more productive as an employee, more effective as a manager, more effective as an entrepreneur and more inspiring as an executive. And by entitlement, I mean the sense that history or circumstances owe me a debt and my reward is not conditional or proportional to my input.

What Measurements are Quantifiable in Morally Bankrupt Systems?

How long must affirmative action continue? Must it continue for the same duration as the initial racial bias that was conducted in favour of one race over another; or where is a reasonable line of compensation drawn?

This question effectively asks how long one can perpetuate an inequitable system in redress of another inequitable system. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds, but no better methodology has yet been contrived to balance the experiences of a previously disadvantaged demographic group and accelerate the recovery of that group to a retributive position, as if the initially inequitable system had never existed.

In South Africa, it would mean all white people leaving the land, signing over mineral recovery and beneficiation and abandoning infrastructure to indigenous people. Aspects of this have been attempted with spectacular failure.

Does affirmative action not just encourage laziness in the job market because there is no real competition? The inherent weakness of guaranteeing jobs to people without suitable qualifications or appreciation for the competitive job market should be apparent to even the most inexperienced economist. Dark humorists and fans of irony will point out that precisely the lack of suitable expertise that forms the subject matter of this contemplation gave rise to the short-sighted idiocy of these policies of the ANC government in the first place. It is that government's own policies that have lead to the greatest civil uprisings since the demise of apartheid.

Most readers will be aware that competition for a job vacancy and a sense of personal achievement are driving factors in understanding why your employer expects your best effort, or at least a competent effort. If an employee is not prepared to contribute any value, or if their assessed value outweighs their contribution to the economic well-being and survival of their employer business, that employee is redundant or, euphemistically, "surplus to requirements."

Is Economic Equality an Imposssible Dream?

Economic equality is achievable in the sense that equality is understood in the genuine context of opportunity parity despite circumstances and not as a victim of them. Many successful entrepreneurs and business people have inspiring histories to share. A noteworthy characteristic of their histories is the will and determination to prevail, despite unfavourable circumstances.

Victims and the mentality of victimhood are outdated and unattractive concepts, existing as ideals only in primitive society.

No justification is permissible for the legislation of ideologies that perpetuate racial superiority, yet Africa persists in thriving only on blame and the ideologies to which it attributes its current reality. A paradigm shift in attitude in necessary, accompanied by a realistic and informed view of healthy economic, social and political maturity.

Is the victim's mind ready for this?

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