Race obsession leading South Africa to ruin
Jimmy Manyi
I almost expressed my expresso this morning when I read that Jimmy Manyi is tipped to become director-general of South Africa’s department of labour. Manyi chairs the Employment Equity Commission and presides over the Black Management Forum, a talk-shop and pressure group to force racial quotas on firms. Manyi is totally obsessed with race and perceived racism, and I fear he will use this new post (if he gets it) to dictate to private companies exactly who and who not to employ.
I attended a talk given by Manyi some months ago and left feeling revolted by the extreme racial profiling he and his organisation promote. His ideas sound as if they come from some crazy nineteenth-century racial theorist. Employment equity is apparently not about trying to find a reasonable balance of affirmative action and scarce skills. It is about strict racial quotas, with females and disabled people also get a look-in. And it’s not only about blacks and whites either. No, every shade of skin has to be classified and have a quota.
Only race matters to Manyi. Not the content of people’s characters. Not their intelligence, or general knowledge. Nor their education or experience. Not their work ethic, presentation skills, management ability, inter-personal skills, vision, insight, creativity, diligence, energy, temperament, leadership qualities, technical skills or loyalty. No – just race. And certainly not competence. In fact competence is seen as a negative, because it reflects badly on the great majority of people who are not competent to do a specific job.
The architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, would have been proud of him.
So what if you can’t find enough suitably qualified people to fill certain jobs – simply change the definition of “skilled”. To Manyi, a skill is something you can learn on the job just so long as you show some potential. An example he gave was that of Hamilton Naki, Chris Barnard’s so-called “assistant”. This primary school-educated vivisection lab cleaner and janitor, Manyi asserts, would have been a heart surgeon the equal of Barnard but for being Black. To be sure, Naki’s story is an inspiring one – but working around a heart surgeon does not qualify you to become a learn-on-the-job surgeon – no matter what colour you are. Would you allow yourself be operated on by such a surgeon? Would you drive over a bridge designed by a kerbside welder who “learnt” engineering on the job?
Manyi’s tinkering with the definition of “skill” leads him to say that the skills shortage is “a myth”. And this is leading South African down a very dangerous path. We’ve already seen how the deployment of these types of “skills” to run government departments and state-owned enterprises has lead to full-scale failure and dysfunction of most of these institutions. It justifies the minister of labour to furiously threaten private companies with a “revolution”. It shields incompetence and inefficiency behind a protective wall of racial guilt.
It also costs a great deal of money as poor management simply squanders the nation’s wealth. Eskom has just posted a R9.7 billion loss, after making R33.5 billion in profit the five years previously. And it’s put down to sheer bad management. It is a management that is totally out of its depth and yet rewards itself with grotesquely large bonuses. And yes, rewards itself for replacing highly skilled and experienced white engineers and managers with young inexperienced poorly trained blacks. It is Manyi’s redefinition of “skill” that allows this sort of thing to happen.
But worst of all, the idea that there is no skills shortage, just racism, removes any incentive to correct the imbalances of the past by the one means that would actually work: education. Education in South Africa is in a dismal state, and getting worse. And it’s not for lack of money: South Africa spends more per capita than countries of comparable economic development. Could it because schools are run and staffed by people who don’t have the skills to do so? Mr Manyi would probably argue that’s it’s all a racist plot since there is no skill shortage.
The hard fact is that whites are generally reasonably educated and by and large have the necessary skills for the jobs they are employed to do. Generally blacks do not have those skills for both historical and cultural reasons. The way to fix this is not to deny this, but to do something about it. Like educating the kids properly. Like removing the ridiculous handbrake on the economy that is Telkom and getting inexpensive broadband into every home. And like providing incentives to companies to provide mentoring to young black people in the workplace.
These things can be done without damaging the economy and will ensure a prosperous future for all. Or we can let Jimmy Manyi and his race obsessed comrades lead us to ruin.
Update: Yes, the government confirmed that Jimmy Manyi is the new director-general of the labour department. Business: watch out for the racial jackboot.
Caster vanquishes racist hordes
Caster Semenya has arrived back in South Africa to a heroes welcome. A hero of what, I’m not sure. Amidst the “Viva!” and “you strike a woman and you strike a rock!” cries, one could believe she had bravely escaped the pits of racism of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, where evil Aryans with their cold devil blue eyes and Teutonic blond hair were intently plotting to keep athletics pure and white. Hitler had slipped up and let a black man – a BLACK man! – show up the pride of his super-race by beating them at this very stadium. This outrage would not be tolerated! No black person would ever be allowed to besmirch the Fatherland again, particularly not in the Fuhrer’s citadel where the pride of the white race was once again on display for the IAAF world athletics championships. But clearly, our new heroine has single handedly vanquished the racist hordes and has left them feeling as deflated and furious as Hitler did in his cold bunker. The ultimate insult was inflicted by the villainous Semenya in snatching the 800m gold medal from the soft hands of a beautiful young white flower.
Or so it would seem.
Caster Semenya with bronze medallist Jenny Meadows. Controversially, no calls have been made for the gender testing of Meadows
The outrage is palpable at the press conference. How dare they question the sex of this beautiful African girl? It’s clearly racism. As that student of Aristotelian reason, ANC MP Butana Komphela said:
“There are many female white athletes taking part in the competition who look like men but there is no upheaval, they were never subjected to such a condition.”
And it’s just vicious racism to question her deep baritone voice – after all that’s how black women sound: just listen to Aretha Franklin.
Leonard Chuene, Athletics SA boss, is of course entirely reasonable, detached and scientific when he pontificates:
“It is an insult to our country. Are we going to allow other people to set the agenda for us as African people just because we’re in Europe? I say no. There will be no more tests on this child. No one will touch this child until she comes home. There will be no more press releases.
So no tests. Take our word for it. Absolutely no tests.
“She was conceived by a woman and a man. No one on earth can dispute this. I want to see the scientists that can prove that she is not a girl.
“Children are not taken to laboratories to see what their gender is. We look at one place and we know, why must she be subjected to this? How you look and behave is a God-given thing. You do not have a say in that.”
Yup. Sounds about right to me. The Telegraph is reporting that tests have already shown that Caster has three times the normal testosterone levels for a woman. And also that Dr Ekkart Arbeit, the former East German coach who turned Heidi Krieger into Andreas Krieger was the head coach. Racist white neo-colonialist press. Down with racism, down!
Julius Malema, the saw and chisel wizard, has suggested that the reason Caster is being picked on is that she hails from a small village. And probably also because she is African. Which makes sense: no African from a small village has ever before won an athletics event. And of course the purely white, racial-purity protectors that run world athletics would never allow it.
No, we must tell the racists to go to hell. As Julius says:
Malema said they would not allow Europeans to continue treating black people as if they were monkeys.
“She must just give back their medal if they continue calling for her to be tested. We will give her a proper gold here in South Africa,” he said.
Malema said there were many athletes who looked like men who had never been harassed as Semenya had been.
“There are so many athletes who are ugly and some look like men but no one has said anything. That girl (Semenya) is nice and we support her,” said Malema.
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