From diplomacy to politics
and current affairs
Photo of Himalayas from Tibet
Equal Opportunities For AllIn my view, Affirmative Action and Black Empowerment are too often misguided attempts to socially engineer a condition of equal responsibility and equal pay, irrespective of equal experience and equal qualifications, a futile exercise in a world where inequality in any form is the norm. These attempts, funded and promoted by government, using taxpayers’ money (thereby compelling white taxpayers to pay toward their own disadvantage), are generally a waste of time and effort.
Why? Because replacing an advantaged person with a disadvantaged person; replacing a man with a woman; replacing a white person with a black person; or replacing an old person with a young person, appear to be the major objectives of such social engineering strategies, whereas the objective should be to replace the less effective person with a more effective person, irrespective of personal circumstances, gender, ethnicity or age. Ability and cost-effectiveness should be the key criteria. Not token equality, revenge or reverse-discrimination. Generally, our country’s Constitution addresses equality as a means (equal opportunity) and not an end (literal equality). Nonetheless, paragraph 9 (2) of South Africa’s Bill of Rights, refers to promoting “the achievement of equality.” In this context, “equality” could be misinterpreted by some to imply “literal equality.” Irrespective of how the Bill of Rights is interpreted though, there are still far too many political leaders and rabble rousers, either intentionally or unintentionally, fuelling unrealistic expectations of literal equality. Therefore, we need to remain constantly aware of what is meant by “equality”.Popular issues like income and land ownership, if looked at in racial terms, are certainly not literally “equal.” For “equality” in terms of income, more than 90 percent of South Africa’s non-White population would need to be experiencing the same average standard of living as the White population. But this would be a situation much closer to literal equality, than equal opportunity. As there will likely be a wealthy class, a middle class and a working class for the foreseeable future, literal equality is an unrealistic expectation. Giving a plot of land to every South African family would be politically popular, but would be neither rational nor realistic. However, making leasehold land available to individuals, cooperatives, farmers and communities could help to partially resolve the issue of landlessness and land-inequality by addressing land-availability, particularly to Black South Africans. Literal equality, though, in terms of land use, ownership, value or income would simply not be feasible. The cost, size, location and quality of plots of land cannot all be the same, so vast differences in value would be an inevitable consequence of those differences. Literal equality is not a normal condition in our ever-changing world. It’s one of the reasons why most human beings have the inborn capacity to adapt to whatever ills and challenges life throws their way. Can any two people be equally beautiful, equally strong, equally intelligent, equally influential or equally happy? Perhaps for a few minutes or hours they could be equally wealthy, but as soon as one spends more money than the other, inequality is the result. Even in the natural world, there is no actual equality. The sparrow kills the worm; the hawk kills the sparrow. There’s also no equality between worms, between sparrows or between hawks. It’s a condition they never even think about. Trust me on this. But, to get back to human beings. The only kind of equality worth anything at all is equality of opportunity. After that its up to the individual to achieve the best possible result. An athletics coach who trains two people of the same gender, weight, height and age, to run the same distance, using the same training techniques, doesn’t expect both athletes to cross the finish line at the same time. Invariably, one will finish ahead of the other. That’s how life is most of the time. There are winners and losers, and a lot of people in between who are neither total winners nor total losers. The American Declaration of Independence famously declares that “all men are created equal.” However, the statement contains a caveat that is not written down, but implied, because the intent of this observation is that “all men are created equal under God.” In today’s less God-fearing more politically correct world, the statement might declare that, “all people are created equal under the law.” There is certainly no intention to imply that all people are literally equal, a situation that some 240 years ago was even more unbelievable than that notion is today. The law cannot make you literally equal. It can only treat you equally and ensure that you are treated equally by others. There is a very useful lesson to learn from the Second World War when hundreds of thousands of young men and women were disadvantaged by having to give up their jobs, their opportunities for further education and their dreams of a better life, in exchange for the dangers of war over many years. Those soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen who survived the war came back to a much-changed economic environment, where success increasingly depended on new skills and higher education. It was an environment unsuited to the meager resources of so many young men and women who had sacrificed their ambitions, their hopes and aspirations in order to serve their country in its time of need. They had fallen down the socio-economic ladder and needed to be able to climb back up. America’s response to this situation came in the form of the G.I. Bill (officially, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944). Payments to returning military personnel included accommodation and tuition fees to complete high school, and attend university, college or vocational/technical training school. Low cost mortgages and low interest loans to start a business were also available. In addition, one year of unemployment compensation was payable. By 1956 almost 9 million Americans had made use of the G.I. Bill to further their education. Over the years the G.I. Bill was extended to cover American military veterans of all wars and is still in place today. What disadvantaged South Africans need, irrespective of their ages, ethnicity, race or gender, is a socio-economic ladder they can climb that is better and more effective than the current political game of musical chairs, commonly termed Black Economic Empowerment or Affirmative Action. In South Africa, Public Service housing subsidies, 100 percent housing loans, and education bursaries served to help many white civil servants improve their lives before April 1994; and such benefits should still be available today to benefit not a single ethnic group, but all South African citizens. Up to one million illegal immigrants, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho, live and work in South Africa. Most of them are hard-working, industrious, people who add to the economy of South Africa through their labor and as consumers; but also place a great strain on our country’s social services, for which they don’t pay taxes. Unless they become legal residents and pay taxes, their presence will continue to place an unnecessary burden on the South African taxpayer. Therefore, they need to either be returned to their countries of origin as soon as possible or assisted to become legally-naturalized South African citizens. Education and training, employment opportunities, accommodation, food and access to health facilities are basic requirements for socio-economic advancement. The government, in partnership with the private sector, needs to design and implement a human development plan that will enable currently disadvantaged South Africans to look after their own needs in future. Taking some existing facilities into account, and borrowing from other examples like the G.I. Bill, could form the basis of such a plan. So instead of introducing a system of dependency, the government’s goal should be to promote individual independence as widely as possible. Its objective should be to create opportunities for all South Africans who are failing to achieve social mobility and economic security, instead of creating false expectations of literal equality in the form of equal wealth and equal land ownership. Equal opportunity and not literal equality, should be our goal. By equipping South Africans with individual skills, education, business or farming expertise and the means to acquire land and accommodation, they would individually be better able to progress economically and socially. Although the government and private sector may collaborate to create an environment of equal opportunity, the end result should be entirely up to the individual. Returning to the athletics coach analogy, when training is completed, opportunity is created. It is then up to the athlete to finish first, last or in between. Well, that’s my take on equality. What do you think? Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "DIPLOMATIC NOTES - Memoirs of a Diplomat". Click here >>> Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
|