The fracas caused by DisChem’s ill-advised moratorium on the hiring and promotion of white employees has focused attention on the government’s potentially fatal intention to
Racially inflammatory statements have no place in our society, regardless of their origin or the intention of the user. This should have been the ruling
SPEECH BY FORMER PRESIDENT F W DE KLERK TO THE OXFORD UNION, 28 JANUARY 2005 THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA AFTER TEN YEARS –
Our history mirrors the troubled histories of many other countries in North and South America and Australasia that were ‘discovered’ and settled by Europeans between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The indigenous populations were conquered, some were enslaved and nearly all lost their ancestral lands. As Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux observed: “They made us many promises, but they kept only one: they promised to take our land – and they did.” Some indigenous people died resisting the invaders – but many, many more succumbed to the settlers’ diseases – perhaps as many as 90% of the population of South and Central America.
The FW de Klerk Foundation welcomes the Western Cape Education Department’s finding that it could find no evidence of racism at Brackenfell High School’s recent matric function.
The EFF obtained a permit for a demonstration by 100 people. In the event, an estimated 2 000 of its supporters descended on the suburb. Hardly any of the protesters wore masks and far exceeded the 500 permitted at outdoor meetings under COVID19 regulations. According to the SAHRC some protesters were carrying golf clubs, axes and stones. They caused serious damage to the Brackenfell Post Office, to traffic lights and roads and to a car dealership. They burned a fire engine and set fire to grass.
Last Friday both Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investor Services downgraded South Africa’s sovereign risk rating by a further notch each, pushing the country yet further into junk status. South Africa is now at ‘its lowest credit rating levels…since 1994’, said the Treasury in its reaction.
In a unanimous judgment delivered by the Chief Justice Mogoeng, the Constitutional Court reinforced the founding values of our Constitution, which is built on human dignity and the achievement of a non-racial South Africa. This judgment sends a clear message to all employers and employees that racism will not and cannot be condoned in the workplace.
The matter was heard on appeal from the Labour Appeal Court (LAC) and concerned the dismissal of a South African Revenue Service (SARS) employee in 2007 after a dispute where he referred to his senior colleague as a “k****r” and stated that “a k****r must not tell me what to do”. In terms of a collective agreement between SARS and the unions, SARS conducted a disciplinary hearing and the employee pleaded guilty to the use of abusive and derogatory language towards his senior. The sanction imposed by the independent Chairperson, which was agreed to by all parties at the disciplinary hearing, was a final written warning valid for six months, as well as suspension without pay for 10 days. The employee was also directed to undergo counselling. The SARS Commissioner (the Commissioner) unilaterally changed the final written warning to a dismissal, without affording the employee the opportunity to make representations and effectively going against a sanction approved by the SARS representative who attended the disciplinary hearing. The aggrieved employee referred the matter to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) on the ground of unfair dismissal.
The Constitution enshrines the values, rights and principles of the society we aspire to be, yet are still struggling to become. These values – including dignity, achievement of equality, the advancement of human rights and freedom, non-racialism and non-sexism – have little value on paper, unless given life by a society. We still have to achieve real and substantive equality in many areas of our society. For some of us – irrespective of race – the real meaning of equality still evades us. It is quite often viewed as what to get or keep instead of what to give. The biggest hurdle we are facing as a society in this regard, is not how to achieve equality by way of policies, programmes and legislation (although the latter certainly deserve some scrutiny of its own), but rather how to overcome our own prejudices.
