Affirmative Action in South Africa: Transformation or Tokenism?

Abstract

This chapter addresses the issue of affirmative action in the newly democratic South Africa. It outlines the relatively easy adoption of affirmative action as principle and policy by the government, despite the likelihood that specific programs of affirmative action were likely to generate particular problems. The chapter locates affirmative action as part of the overall agenda of transformation. It argues that, although racial identity was in the past utilised in the most opportunistic and pernicious ways by successive apartheid governments, the use of racial identity to further the aims of affirmative action will not contradict the present government's commitment to a non-racial democracy. Section One deals with the legacy of apartheid. It argues that the rationale for affirmative action can be found in notions of compensatory and distributive justice, and diversity, and that the specific race conscious approach will not detract from the ideal of non-racialism espoused by the majority party in government, the African Nationalist Congress. Section Two describes the first piece of affirmative action legislation and addresses some likely problems with the implementation of affirmative action programs, specifically in relation to their shape and the purported beneficiaries. Section Three focuses on the question of equality and the judiciary's approach to the issue. This section also discusses the first successful legal challenge to an affirmative action program of the Ministry of Justice. Section Four surveys the possibilities and limitations of affirmative action in South Africa, despite its popular support and prima facie constitutional protection. Implicit in the enquiry is the recognition that affirmative action remains one of a series of governmental assaults on poverty and economic inequality, and that affirmative action policies on their own cannot substitute for these governmental interventions.