Chairperson, I have over the past year on numerous occasions attempted to bring to the government's attention that affirmative action is doing South Africa more harm than good. And I want to repeat it here again.
I have no problem with the replies from various Ministers of the executive who say affirmative action is a policy of the government and that it is here to stay until the imbalances of the past have been addressed. John Kane-Berman in his article in the Business Day of today says:
Given the manner in which affirmative action is being applied, it is likely that imbalances will be with us indefinitely. This is because the objective of redressing them has been largely superseded by the ideology of racial representivity.
In practice, this means quotas and numerical targets.
Mr Kane-Berman points out that racial representivity and redressing of the imbalances of the past are not the same thing. He says that representivity and the elimination of the disadvantaged can come together only if it is assumed that once the former has been achieved, all imbalances will ipso facto have been eliminated and all previous disadvantages redressed. This is something that, he says, is false.
Mr Kane-Berman says that apartheid serves as a scapegoat and the continuing focus on race allows too many current ills to be traced to apartheid and previous disadvantage and that in the process the extent to which disadvantage arises from current policies is ignored. [Time expired.]