EUSEBIUS MCKAISER | Dear white South Africans (and Herman Mashaba)

Let’s start off by immediately cutting to the myth of meritocracy. You, as white South Africans, have been the biggest beneficiaries of race-based affirmative action in our country. We called the schemes from which you unfairly benefited “colonialism” and “apartheid”.

You seem to conveniently forget what these doctrines entailed. Intrinsic to these race-based ideologies was a project of shielding you, as white people, from competing with black people for jobs and other positions in society such as national representation in sport.

You even competed with only fellow white people for who the most beautiful woman in the land is! Furthermore, you were offered disproportionate amounts of public resources – which resources were accumulated by exploiting black bodies – and with which you realised your full human potential.

So, the first historical truth you must accept, however much it angers you or shows up your fragility, is that the longest-running race-based affirmative action scheme in the history of this country was one designed for your unjust white benefit.

That, in one sense, really is the core of what apartheid was. When you want to debate affirmative action in the year 2022, make sure you rid yourself of the fantasy that affirmative action policies were invented after 1994.

That is false. When your uncles and aunts benefited from job reservation policies throughout the 1900s, they were a cohort of affirmative action beneficiaries. If it was not for pro-white affirmative action policies – aka colonialism and apartheid – then you would not, as a racial demographic, ever have ended up with a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic wealth. It is nice to be white in South Africa because of the long pro-white affirmative action history. You still benefit from that today.

If neither biology nor effort explain white employment figures, then why the disparity with their black counterparts? Is there a non-racist way of making sense of this? Yes, there is. The answer is simple and many whites, and Herman Mashaba, do not like the answer

White successes are not examples of meritocracy. White people’s economic dominance is an exemplar of a grand affirmative action scheme.

But many white South Africans have deliberately internalised the lie that their successes are merely a combination of hard work and maybe a little bit of genetic luck. These are not just lies but, wittingly or unwittingly, a set of views that require one to make racist assumptions about black capability.

Take one illustrative example, from employment data: 38% of Black Africans are unemployed; 9% of white people are unemployed. This is a trend that has existed for many years, that is, white workers enjoying single digit unemployment for most of our history while black people can only dream of that being so. You cannot account for this with reference to the size of the white population.

South Africans of Asian descent have 16% unemployment, and coloured workers sit at 27%.

The only way you can insist that white people having single-digit unemployment is due to hard work and some good genes is if you believe, correspondingly, that black and brown people are lazy and/or have inferior genes.

This racist background view can only be eliminated if you accept that talents are randomly distributed by Mother Nature, and that black people are not lazy, and are not less hardworking than whites. But then you have a conundrum: if neither biology nor effort explain white employment figures, then why the disparity with their black counterparts? Is there a non-racist way of making sense of this? Yes, there is.

The answer is simple and many whites, and Herman Mashaba, do not like the answer. White people have better economic outcomes because they benefited from affirmative action for a few hundred years! They accumulated so much unjust wealth, handed down intergenerationally, that even after the formal demise of apartheid they continue to enjoy the benefits of pro-white affirmative action, aka colonialism and apartheid.

So it is breathtakingly arrogant and narcissistic for so many white people to think they are champions of meritocracy and victims of affirmative action. In fact, the white South African labour experience is the gold standard of affirmative action, and of benefiting from an anti-meritocracy ideology called white supremacy. White accumulation of wealth was the basis of the political economy of this country for centuries.

But this truth is inconvenient for Klein Jan, who desperately wants to believe his assets and everything on his CV reflect only his incredible hard work “despite affirmative action”. Actually, Klein Jan is simply gaslighting black people. Don’t let him get away with it. He loves affirmative action. But he only loves it when he benefits, as his family did for centuries.

White people, not black people, invented affirmative action. Yes, I am afraid you will have to sit through your rage reading, and re-reading, the previous sentence. I did not invent it.

Which brings me to your response to the internal company letter written by the Dis-Chem CEO Ivan Saltzman in which he communicated a moratorium on hiring white individuals until there is compliance with the relevant employment equity legislation. Many of you are screaming “racism!!!!” and demanding, as Herman Mashaba does, hiring based on “merit” because race-based policies, he says, are “divisive”.

My lord, with all the apartheid-era resources spent on white education, why do so many of you fail to think critically before you tweet or speak? And in Mashaba’s case, with all the wealth you have accumulated, why have you not invested in some coaching to help you to think critically before tweeting from the right-wing hip? So, let’s spell this out very clearly.

First, I left something crucial out when I reminded you at the beginning of this open letter that affirmative action in South Africa was first invented by white people for white people. I left out a clear moral difference in the logic of pro-white affirmative action during colonialism and apartheid, and the aim of redress in our democracy.

There is a false moral equivalence that should be avoided. Job reservation during apartheid was racist. It was squarely aimed at advantaging white people just because they were white. It piggybacked on a worldview that saw black people as less than human, not entitled to dignity and equality, and undeserving of economic justice. That is why apartheid was declared a crime against humanity.

Employment equity policies are not premised on any black superiority ideology or any anti-white racism. A cluster of affirmative action policies are necessary to change the racist structures of the colonial and apartheid eras.

You cannot, through prayer and hope, wish away the intergenerational consequences of colonialism and apartheid. The corrective tools we must use are many, and they are morally justified by the lights of their intention, which is to say, redressing past racist injustices within the economy so that freedom is not reduced to political rights.

The beneficiaries of colonialism and apartheid want us to eliminate race from all economic policies, not because they are champions of anti-racism, but because they do not want their ill-gotten economic benefits to be reversed

No-one who is committed to a just South Africa can get hysterical about racial quotas within the labour markets. If you do not measure it, you cannot know whether you are achieving it, and “it” in this sentence refers to a world of work that looks more like the country we are in. The beneficiaries of colonialism and apartheid want us to eliminate race from all economic policies, not because they are champions of antiracism, but because they do not want their ill-gotten economic benefits to be reversed.

The pretence that this is about opposing the use of “racist” policies to stop the perpetuation of a racist past is so disingenuous that it is laughable. If you are anti-racist, then you must sign up for interventions that are colour-coded as a necessary means with which to make serious and observable headway in marching towards a more just South Africa. So, if you are mad about the Dis-Chem letter then you are not to be taken seriously as an ally in the struggle for economic justice.

As for you, Herman, to be honest, I give up on you.

I know you. I bump into you at our local shopping centre. I find you very accessible and convivial. You are quick with a joke. And you are always happy to engage. These are good traits in a politician. But, my goodness, have you learnt nothing, as an elderly black man, about the history of our past that structurally disadvantaged you, and led to your exceptional story of overcoming the racist odds stacked against you?

Your life story is not proof that race does not matter. It is proof that racism is so serious that we cannot be glib in our examination of how it continues to manifest even in the present. Your comfortable life in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, Herman, is not proof that Dis-Chem’s CEO is wrong. That your story is the exception rather than the norm is proof that the Dis-Chem CEO has his head screwed on right.

Your collapse into colourblind politics and right-wing economic thought, Herman, will simply make it harder for your younger colleagues in ActionSA, like Bongani Baloyi and Michael Beaumont, to do damage control. Your tweet, hating on the Dis-Chem CEO, is from the playbook of DA politician, Helen Zille. Zille must have been jealous to see your tweet going viral. Your politics is indistinguishable. It is now clear that you only left the DA because of personality clashes and not because of deep differences in political conviction. Like Zille, you do not take black struggle seriously, Herman. And, no, your personal story – as is the case with Zille – can no longer be trotted out as a response to your anti-black sentiment. Your admirable past is not immunity from skewering you in the present.

As for white people who love seeing a few black people like Herman agreeing with them, rest assured that Herman’s view does not generalise. Just like the Tory party in Britain has women and black men in its leadership, little can be inferred from some minorities or members of historically oppressed groups bathing themselves in regressive politics. There will always be a few Hermans around. The nexus question is what the historically compelling and morally decent positions are on these thorny questions of economic justice.

The Dis-Chem CEO is no hero, by the way. He is motivated by profit and not by moral logic. But I happily celebrate the deterrent effect of the legislation he fears. However we get there, we must all continue to support policies aimed at economic redress. The uselessness of both the state and many corporations to comply, monitor and implement these rules is no reason to throw the justice baby out with the tears of white folks.

Yours in pursuit of racial justice,

Eusebius