The ideology of Positive Discrimination. The Ghanaian & South African experiences.

For the umpteenth time a seemingly casual dialogue with a South African work colleague took off on a tangent when she started to lament the depths to which her dear 'motherland' had sunk. She rather poignantly, and quite often with the glitter of a tear in her eyes, reminisced about how good the country used to be when she was growing up and to my great discomfiture, I hasten to add. She attacked the president of that country and a few other African leaders including Ghana's for being cronies and supporters of Robert Mugabe and outrightly condemned the rapidly deteriorating security situation in that country and how discriminatory the state had become towards the white minority to which she obviously belonged.

I must say I was dumbfounded! For the first time in my life I had seen a Boer who was genuinely “heart-broken and concerned' about the South African situation. Unbelievable! The lass even had the hutzpah to actually intimate ,at some point in this melodrama unfolding before me, that she had actually met black South Africans who were so appalled by the high rate of unemployment and crime within the motherland that they actually wished the infamous apartheid was reintroduced; an idea that drove me ad nauseam. This, dear reader, was definitely the proverbial rod that broke the back of the camel. At this point all my inhibitions as a college lecturer dissolved and I threw a tantrum right in front of everybody including my head of department and a few students. I launched into a tirade at her apparent selective amnesia which obviously motivated her unbelievably jaundiced and mordant vitriol of the South African situation. I had to exit the office in order to simmer down as only, the deity; “Asaase Afua” would have known what the outcome would have been otherwise.

Dear reader, this not so United Kingdom is awash with a posse of South African immigrants comprising the White, Asian and the Black. This writer has had the mixed blessing of working with a cross- section of them. In all my chinwags with some of the White South Africans that I have had the displeasure of meeting–especially the Afrikaners-, almost all of them blamed their odyssey from the motherland on rising criminality and the supposed blatant discrimination meted out to them by the ANC government. How paradoxical! How the mighty are, indeed, fallen! That a great number of white Afrikaners feel crestfallen with the country is an understatement. Actually a reasonable number of them still nurse a hefty hangover from the sweet days of apartheid when the land used to drip with 'milk and honey' and often, albeit discreetly, at the presence of a Black African, search subconsciously for the reassuring sign on the saloon door that used to read: “Halt. Slechts wit! (Halt. Whites only!).

There is no disputing the fact that South Africa, like any democratic country, especially those in their infancy, will inevitably be confronted with a surge in crime and a great many troubles for as the cliché rightly goes, power corrupts and… This, indubitably, is due to the fact that the populace -often overwhelmed and intoxicated with the sweet savour of freedom and their newly acquired power to call the ruling class to book- gets carried away. This, coupled with the new found freedom of the press, means that crime and all that plagues a country is often over reported thereby painting an overly melodramatic picture of the real situation on the ground. The above fare is not dissimilar to that in Ghana where there has been a dramatic augmentation in the occurrence and reportage of armed robbery since the democratic dispensation was rolled out. The question to be asked is this: Is this a price worth paying for democracy? I think it is, don't you?

After the unbested benevolence and altruism displayed by Nelson Mandela at the aftermath of apartheid (for a great many Africans including most Boers anticipated severe retribution. This explains why the South African Nuclear programme was dismantled prior to the ANC government taking power for fear of it being used for a nuclear holocaust by the Black against their former masters) one would have thought that the White population would have been grateful to start afresh, join ranks with their Black and Asian brothers in a spirit of reconciliation and committed themselves to nation building. Not so in this situation! To the contrary, most of them have always orchestrated ways to bemoan all that is wrong with the country since the “Kaffirs” took over the motherland and contaminated it with their “grimy black skins” and have dastardly evacuated the country in droves under the guise of a virtually non-existent racial discrimination. A sizeable number of these narcissistic individuals immigrated to the UK with the fervent belief that their Caucasian 'brothers' in these British Isles will welcome them with open arms (while confining the Boer Wars to history) and that they could easily blend in and become British. But they only have to utter a word to be confronted with vintage British superciliousness disguised sagaciously in the rather alienating question “where are you from”? To this many of these on self-imposed exile who have conned the immigration system into offering them British citizenship answer in this wise “I'm Bri'sh” [sic] in a vain attempt to conceal their heavily muffled accents with a good dose of cockney. Quizzed further they often reluctantly yield and offer the following explanation: “well, I'm originally South African but now British”. How pathetic!

And now for some amplification. Let it be known herein and now that the ideology of Positive Discrimination being pursued in South Africa, fallaciously labelled as “Discrimination” by some disaffected and often dippy Afrikaners, is prevalent in most countries including Ghana and some of the so-called established democracies such as the UK. In the latter, institutions such as the Metropolitan Police as well as other police forces often embark on a conscious drive to recruit Black and Asian officers with a view to making the force representative of the ethnic mix in the country and especially within ethnic minority-dominated suburbs such as Brixton, Leicester and Slough. Even educational institutions of higher learning often find it prudent to make their staff and subscribers representative of the main ethnic groups within the country. This -it must be added- is initiated and pursued by the government with zest. This writer is often involved in the development of strategy to make his own college more accommodating of ethnic minority students. This is not entirely dissimilar to Ghanaian situation, albeit to a lesser extent, where the girl child (often considered marginalised and rightly so) is given priority in university admissions over males in an attempt to correct the apparent imbalances within the society. The Australian Aborigine child is also paid a maintenance allowance for the wanton discrimination that their fore parents suffered under their Caucasian invaders which triggered a vicious cycle of discrimination down the generations.

With the preceding examples in mind, is it strange that South Africa, a country with approximately 75% black, 13.6% white, 8.6% ethnic mix and 2.6% Asian ,will positively discriminate in favour of the substantive majority of the land? Off course not! Yet some patently fatuous, scatter-brained and disenchanted Afrikaners call for “Equality”. To these I say “tough luck”! I bet you can't wait to have your so-called “Equality” so you can wave all the ill-gotten certificates acquired under apartheid at various job interviews to the disgust and detriment of Black and Asian co-interviewees (who have little or no qualifications as a result of apartheid), can you?

Well, well, sorry mate but you've had your turn; it's now that of the aborigines and the original owners of the land. Be a true sportsman and stand aside!

Bernard Asher is a lecturer of Business Management & Economics @ the Guildford College for Higher and Further Education in Guildford, Surrey, England ,U.K.
E-mail: basher @guildford.ac.uk

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