Affirmative Action hurts blacks: IRR

The Institute of Race Relations is maintaining its stance on affirmative action, despite the staunch criticism it has received according to its CEO Frans Cronje.

"Too often these critics are people whose own children are unlikely ever to be exposed to toxic water or incompetent public hospitals," Cronje wrote at Politicsweb.

Responding to critics claiming that the IRR is simply maintaining white privilege Cronje pointed out that whites aren't particularly doing badly under the current system.

"Our critique of current affirmative action policy is built on examples where the victims of such policy are black. Accusations that the critique is racist ignore this," Cronje wrote.

"Ironically, the current model of affirmative action has proved particularly effective at empowering whites by pushing them into entrepreneurship (as the IRR has previously pointed out). We have gone as far to say that if any people have been empowered by affirmative action since 1994 it has primarily been white South Africans," he wrote.

He further noted that white South Africans have a 6% unemployment rate.

Cronje maintains that the major issue is not one of racial advantage, but one of poorer municipalities suffering from worse services as a result of affirmative action being abused.

"Our critics counter that the policy must simply be implemented properly. This is naïve. We have a very corrupt government - and if you give it the power to hide its malfeasance and damaging ideology behind ‘racial transformation', it will do so," Cronje wrote.

Cronje then went on to describe how affirmative action policies often mean less qualified people end up getting jobs in the hopes they grow into them, and sometimes positions are left vacant rather than filled with a competent person of the wrong race.

"It [Affirmative Action] thus explicitly allows the selection of unqualified people - and this is simply not fair to the poor communities which pay the consequences," Cronje wrote.