Race Bound

T.O. Molefe, The Con

Racial ideology, oppression and the battle over entrance to the new South African university

The University of Cape Town’s “new” admissions policy appears to be not only imperfect, it also looks incomplete. It generates a racial profile of admission offers similar to the old model, but it does so using a conceptually muddy pretext and might still exclude “disadvantaged” black applicants in favour of similarly capable white applicants who’ve performed only marginally better at school. I reviewed the parts of the policy that are public and tried to make sense of how a policy that seems to be a move in the right direction came to be an overwrought capitulation to the pressure from politicians and the dangerous lobbyists for race blindness. I also looked at the broader social implications.

The Mere Mention of the Words 'Affirmative Action'...

Mandisi Majavu, SACSIS

Last month the BBC published an article titled, “Do white people have a future in South Africa?” Western institutions like the BBC see no problem in commissioning articles like this due to mainstream whites’ misconception of racism as a zero-sum game. Research shows that mainstream whites associate a decrease in anti-black racism with an increase in anti-white racism. The notion of “reverse racism” is rooted in this misconception.

Affirmative action does not kill babies

Nikiwe Bikitsha

Nikiwe Bikitsha, Mail & Gaurdian

The academic and political commentator Steven Friedman wrote a very compelling piece that appeared on the South African Civil Society Information Service website last week, with the pithy title, “The real ticking time bomb is the black middle class”.

It was a prescient analysis of an anger that I experience, see and feel, and often am unable to articulate; I fail to grasp its genesis fully. It is an anger playing itself out with ever-greater frequency and in more visceral tones in the social media.

The Bloemhof incident: Affirmative action on death row

Siphokazi Magadla

Siphokazi Magadla, Al Jazeera

A water crisis in South Africa's northwestern town of Bloemhof has led to the deaths of three infants and scores of children and adults admitted to hospital for severe diarrhoea. Preliminary results indicate that the area's main reservoir was contaminated with the E. Coli bacteria which causes diarrhoea due to a sewage spillage. The town's mayor has since been fired by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the municipal manager has resigned, and a task team composed of members of the provincial executive committee and the water and sanitation department has been set up to investigate the tragedy.

The Problem With Affirmative Action

by Lewis R. Gordon, Truthout

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the famed African-American literary scholar and director of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, recently reflected the following in an interview on National Public Radio: If it weren't for affirmative action, he would not have been admitted to Yale University, regardless of how high his credentials were and he would not have had the opportunities to demonstrate his talent over the past four

decades.(1)