GOVT RACIAL TERMS SLAMMED

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s clarifying of government’s position on race-based terminology in official records has been slammed by the FW de Klerk Foundation. 

The president said: “Our responsibility is to ensure that these terms ultimately make the differences they refer to less and less important, until they are rendered meaningless and no longer serve any purpose

“The use of race-based terminology will always be difficult for a country like ours to accept, especially as we work to put behind us the racial injustices of the past.”

Ramaphosa was responding to questions from members of the National Assembly, particularly the Patriotic Alliance’s Marlon Daniels, who asked why coloured, Indian, Khoisan and white people were not classified as African.

In a statement released on Tuesday night, the FW de Klerk Foundation said Ramaphosa’s remarks in Parliament raised questions about his commitment to the National Constitution’s vision of a non-racial society.

The foundation said: “The continued use of race classification in various laws promulgated over time, serves no purpose other than using it for political patronage and electoral support purposes.

“The outcome of chasing ethnic or racial targets at the expense of expertise has had disastrous consequences at all levels of government, state-owned enterprises, and especially on service delivery at municipal level, in schools, hospitals and so many other public institutions.

“And it is the poorest of the poor, the black majority, that suffers.”

Christo van der Rheede, Executive Director of the FW de Klerk Foundation, said that alternative ways of overcoming the legacies of the past should be explored, and that government should devise a new system balancing the need for redress with merit.

He added: “Reverting back to outdated, divisive and humiliating race-classifications and the use of employment equity targets do not help at all to overcome the injustices of the past. 

“In fact, the past thirty years have proved that such blunt instruments do more harm than good.

“Any society that builds a future on ethnicity or skin colour is doomed to fail.”