Stephanie Kemp: Affirmative action is not an easy matter - as is clear from "Counting the colours".

I was in the UCT physiotherapy class of 1960 and we boasted the first physiotherapy student who was not classified white. Leslie Stevens was forbidden to enter the white wards for her clinicals at the then racially segregated Groote Schuur Hospital. She was forbidden to watch surgery on white patients through a glass dome above the operating theatre; she was forbidden to dissect a white cadaver in anatomy classes. When she qualified, she was asked by the matron to work at Groote Schuur and she declined, saying she chose not to work in half a hospital for half the pay.

So perhaps the redress of past injustice is important even now.

An overarching social normalisation of our society must have a major part in a country where only 9.1 % of the population is white and still, almost 39% of South African students enrolled at the university this year are white. This can't be all right.

It continues to be urgent that many more black health workers are trained to meet the needs of a society where 90% of the population is black. So, whether black students are currently from disadvantaged or more privileged backgrounds seems less important than that we strive to redress a massive societal imbalance.