scholarly journals WHO ARE THE TRUE BENEFICIARIES OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? Solidarity obo Barnard v SAPS 2010 5 BLLR 561 (LC)

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel Mushariwa

Affirmative action measures within the workplace seek to ensure equal employment opportunities and create a workforce that is representative of South African society. One of the issues faced by employers in implementing affirmative action is the question of who should be a beneficiary of affirmative action. This case note seeks to answer this question by looking at the definition given to beneficiaries of affirmative action and the concept of disadvantage. The first part of the article will explore the general objective ofaffirmative action and the two schools of thought on how we identify beneficiaries of affirmative action. I argue that recognition must be given to the fact that individuals who fall within the designated groups are not necessarily equally placed in terms of their experience of disadvantage. I further argue that in recognizing these differing experiences of disadvantage, we can avoid the creation of an elite middle-class black group that benefits from affirmative action to the exclusion of those that truly deserve the protection. The second part of this case note will focus on a landmark decision that highlights the difficulties encountered by employers in fulfilling their obligation of implementing affirmative action policies. In the last part of this case note I shall comment on the lessons that can be drawn from the case. I shall compare the development of affirmative action in the United States and India with that of South Africa in order to show the constitutional principles that need to be advanced within such a social transitional programme and recommend that affirmative action as a means to an end needs to evolve with the understanding that it functions within an ever changing social and economic environment. If such changes are ignored the true beneficiaries of affirmative action are not given recognition and the desired end of creating a workforce representative of South African society and thus reaching our goal of equality cannot be realized.

Author(s):  
Helen Papacostantis ◽  
Muriel Mushariwa

Affirmative action measures within the workplace seek to ensure equal employment opportunities and create a workforce that is representative of South African society. Accordingly, employers need to ensure that the substantive goal of equality is achieved when implementing affirmative action. One of the challenges faced by employers is the choice of beneficiary from designated groups which is diverse and unequal within itself. This paper seeks to address this challenge by looking at the definition given to beneficiaries of affirmative action and the concept of multi layered disadvantage within the Employment Equity Act. The paper will focus on the decision in Naidoo v Minister of Safety and Security and National Commissioner of the South African Police Service which is an example of the disadvantages experienced by members of the designated groups who are also part of a minority group within the designated groups. Particular focus will be placed on the disadvantages experienced by a black female who is also part of a minority. This paper highlights the multi-layered nature of disadvantage experienced by such members of the designated groups and the need to ensure that new forms of disadvantage are not created in the implementation of affirmative action policies by using a situation sensitive approach. It argues that affirmative action as a means to an end needs to evolve with the understanding that it functions within an ever changing social and economic environment. If such changes are ignored the true beneficiaries of affirmative action will not be given recognition and the desired end of creating a workforce representative of South African society together with the goal of substantive equality cannot be realised.


Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Pawlikowski

We are heading for the last of the gracious societies. The United States stands on the threshold of collapse. The last bastion of freedom and anticommunism is to be found in the Republic of South Africa. These were the views of a recently transplanted American sitting behind me on the flight to the RSA. After two weeks of visiting various parts of the country—the KwaZulu homeland and the cities and townships of Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Durban, plus a sideline look at the situation from nearby Swaziland—my traveling companion's evaluation of South African society leaves, in my judgment, much to be desired.


2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Wright

This paper sets out to formulate some of the economic reasons for the continuing dominance of English in the boardrooms, government forums, parastatals and laboratories of South Africa, to consider whether this situation is likely to change, and to assess the extent to which such a state of affairs is at odds with South Africa’s new language policy. The historical reasons for the dominance of English in this sphere are well known: the language’s imperial history, its status as a world language, its role as a medium for political opposition during the apartheid conflict, and the accumulation of capital and economic influence by English-speakers from the mid-nineteenth century onward. However, the day-to-day economic basis for the continuing dominance of English at the apex of South African society has hardly been considered.


1999 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
Katherine F. Shepard

This paper presents a brief description of some of the author’s perceptions of the land, of physiotherapy education and practice and of the struggle of the nation of South Africa acquired during a 4 week visit in late spring 1997. One week was spent in Cape Town participating in several venues at the International Congress of the South African Society of Physiotherapy. Three weeks were spent at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg presenting a course in qualitative research to health care colleagues representing the disciplines of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology and occupational health. During the time in Johannesburg several health care facilities were visited including Baragwanath Hospital, Natal Hospital and the Wits Rural Facility and Tinswalo Hospital at Acornhoek.


Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah James ◽  
Geoffrey Nkadimeng

As part of its attempt to understand ‘an apartheid of souls’, this volume is concerned to show how mission activity, particularly that of European-based churches with close links to the expansion of Dutch/Calvinist influence, may have nurtured the local construction of race or ethnic difference in Indonesian and South African society. One well-known account of Christianity in South Africa shows how the interaction between mission and missionised produced a sharply dichotomised sense - experienced by the Tshidi Tswana as the contrast between setsivana and segoa - of difference between indigenous and imported culture. While this shows how processes devoted to undermining it may paradoxically strengthen a sense of cultural identity, what it does not yield is a sense of how Christianity, appropriated within Tswana and other African societies, furnished a means of marking internal distinctions of social class, dovetailing in unexpected ways with ethnic difference. It is such divisions - potently fusing class with ethnicity and having crucial implications for the ownership, reclaiming, and use of land - with which the present paper is concerned.


Literator ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Steenberg

Glimpses of social change in some postmodernist Afrikaans novelsPostmodernist novels, and thus also Afrikaans postmodernist novels, are radically anti-traditional. In one respect, however, they maintain the tradition of Afrikaans fiction: they open perspectives on the development of the society from which they originate. Functioning in a multicultural community, the novelists' awareness often concerns the development of relations between different racial groupings in the South African society, which is seen as basically African. The breaking down of the (colonial) barriers between black and white by writers of historiographic metafiction - like John Miles and André Letoit - can perhaps be regarded the first step in the direction of social transition. Letoit hails Africa as the continent of promise, and authors like Berta Smit, Eben Venter and Etienne van Heerden present visions of a growing harmony between black and white in the new South Africa.


2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben J. De Klerk

The goal of this article is to investigate the relationship between the liturgy of the worship service, where prophetic preaching is delivered, and the liturgy of life, where the gift of prophecy must be put into practice. In what way could the ‘prophets’ be equipped to become practitioners of the gift of prophecy? A short description is given of what is understood by prophetic preaching and the gift of prophecy in an effort to determine the relationship between these concepts. In a brief summary, burning questions in church life and in the South African society are addressed: in church life, the questions of extreme conservatism and extreme liberalism are scrutinised and in the South African society, corruption and inequality are investigated. In conclusion, a few guidelines are given for putting the gift of prophecy into practice in the liturgy of life.


1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coleen Angove

When Barney Simon's play Cincinatti was presented at the Market Theatre in 1979, it epitomized a watershed event in the development of theatre in South Africa, anticipating a new tend towards a tradition of a multi-racial theatre. In 1965 legislation had forced racial segregation in the theatre. Pleas for the official desegregation of races in the theatre had finally been successful in 1977 and Cincinatti, sporting one of the first multi-racial casts, was symbolic of a reaching-out amongst different racial, cultural and lingual groups in a highly polarized South African society. Cincinatti was chosen by Hauptfleisch and Steadman to represent Alternative theatre in their anthology (South African Theatre, Four Plays and an Introduction, 1984), thereby acknowledging a new theatrical tradition on the South African theatre scene.


Exchange ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-348
Author(s):  
Anthony Balcomb

AbstractNicholas Bhekinkosi Bhengu was founder and leader of the Back to God Crusade in South Africa. This movement started in the mid-1950s and became affiliated with the Assemblies of God in South Africa. But Bhengu's influence went far beyond the confines of the movement he started. His revivals impacted South African society in a profound way and he became internationally recognized as a powerful force for change in South Africa. Controversially, however, he did not enter into the political arena as such, even though he was at one stage of his life a member of the Communist Party of South Africa and even later on in his career continued to affirm the policies of this party. Though apparently apolitical his message had profound political consequences. For example he did much to promote the self-confidence and dignity of his people (despite the dehumanising influences of apartheid which he openly denounced), he insisted on reconciliation between the so-called 'red' people and the so-called 'school' people amongst South African black Africans, and he politely but veryfirmly rejected the standards imposed by white society on blacks. There were also very specific reasons — both theological, philosophical, and pragmatic — why he chose not to become a political activist. His is therefore a very significant case study of the socio-political influences of a ministry that was not overtly political.


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