On Freedom Day: Analysis of Boerish White Lies and The Truth Behind Allegations of Discrimination Against White Men In South Africa

This post acknowledges the 16th anniversary of Freedom Day in South Africa. But celebration isn't really appropriate, as white supremacist racism is still very firmly in place to this day. This post is dedicated, with love, to my friend Katlego Matsila, who provided me with this information. But he offers this caution about what follows: "I would focus on the numbers, not so much on his rationale." I offer some analysis as we make our way through this discussion of what has and hasn't changed since 1994, in brackets and in bold text, below.

[image is from here; please click on it to enlarge the image and text] 

What follows is from *here*, at the South African Institute of Race Relations.

SAIRR Today: Whither the whites? - 29th January 2010

White South Africans are quick to complain [as whites are want to do in a racist state that tries to remedy a gross history of Apartheid or other disgustingly white supremacist practices] that affirmative action and black economic empowerment policies have stymied their career opportunities and chances of economic advancement in South Africa. [The hardships of the delusionally stymied! Surely nothing can be worse.] Curiously, however, a review of income and employment indicators for the country does not bare this out. [SURPRISE!! Whitey is still on top!!!] Rather there is now some evidence that the white community may turn out to be an inadvertent [or the planned] beneficiary of the Government’s various empowerment and affirmative action policies. 

In 2009 levels of unemployment among white South Africans stood at around five percent. This was considerably lower than the national average of just over 23% and even further below the figure of 27.9% for Africans. The unemployment rate for white South Africans was in fact half that for the United States.

Employment equity reports indicate that white South Africans also continue to occupy about 70% of top and senior management jobs in South Africa. They also occupy more than half of all professionally qualified positions. Africans on the other hand occupy under 20% of top and senior management positions and only slightly over 20% of all professionally qualified positions. [And who is surprised by this?]

Since 1996 annual per capita income for whites increased by 217%. [So the rich more than doubled their income.] This was only slightly below the increase of 235% for African South Africans. [So the shitty wages set for Blacks managed to double, to be less shitty, but not equal to whites.] White South Africans have therefore matched the level of income increase for African South Africans [that's devious languaging: whites' income went up far more than did Blacks' because Black people's income started at a much lower rate] even though African incomes have grown off a much lower base. This has happened despite the fact that the Government sought to provide preferential economic opportunities to African South Africans.

In 2009 real per capita disposable income for white South Africans was measured at just under R60 000 per annum. This was six times higher than the figure of just under R10 000 per annum for African South Africans. A further income indicator shows that while white South Africans make up an estimated 13% of adults in South Africa they account for close on 70% of people earning more than R500 000 per year. Almost 75% of adults in South Africa are African but these make up only 20% of people earning over R500 000 per annum. [You know, the way this always works in racist economic systems: wealth is always concentrated in white populations, and populations of color suffer accordingly.]

On the other side of the income scale the level of poverty in the white community was measured at 3.6% in 2008. While this figure was almost double that of 1994 it must be compared to the poverty figure of 49% for African South Africans – a figure largely unchanged since 1994. The measure used here to calculate poverty was an income of below approximately R900 a month for an individual or R3 500 for a household of 8 people. 

The white community remains the most equal of South Africa’s four major race groups. [This is the oddest use of that term. What "most equal" means is "most superior/most dominant/most wealthy"] It is also the only racial community that is now more equal [dominant] on the Gini-coefficient than it was in 1994. The Gini-coefficient measures inequality on a score from 0 to 1 with a 1 indicating complete inequality and 0 indicating complete equality where all people would earn the same amount of income. White South Africans score 0.45 on this scale down from 0.49 in 1996. This is almost on a par with the figure of 0.4 for the United States. The figure for the African community stands at around 0.6, up from 0.54 in 1996. Scores of over 0.55 are deemed to indicate extremely high levels of inequality [including economic and social subordination].  

While incomes and living standards for African South Africans have improved since 1994 the data is unambiguous [or not that ambiguous] that white South Africans continue to maintain a vastly superior standard of living when compared to the standard enjoyed by African South Africans.

This poses two questions. The first is why so many white South Africans are so quick to feel that their opportunities for career advancement and economic prosperity are limited. [Here's a guess: because whites and men HATE IT when their supremacist social structures are altered in any way to become humane and just.] Doubtless affirmative action and black economic empowerment policy is discriminatory [Julian's note: "discriminatory" is the white racist term that could be replaced by "just and fair given the history"] and has closed opportunities for whites to access soft jobs [soft??] in the public service and ‘easy’ tenders for government work. [Shall we get out the violins for the "poor white men" in South Africa? Hell no!] Yet despite these ‘challenges’ [read: attempts at remedying historical and on-going white racism] the white community’s standard of living has been maintained and in fact improved. [Right. So much for the "discrimination".]

This suggests that the discriminatory [just and fair] employment and empowerment policies of the ANC may have forged a greater sense of entrepreneurship and independence among white South Africans. This despite the fact that large sections of the white community had always shown a flair for entrepreneurial activity. [Profitable flairs for entrepreneurial activity comes far more easily to those who are considered South Africans by the purchasing class. Black South Africans were exiled and remain discriminated against, despite reports to the contrary.] Now without the opportunity of soft jobs in the public service (or private sector) or of doing business with government many whites have been forced [well, "force" is a strong word: there are no State-supported police beatings, for example, against white men] to become more independent and take what might be described as even greater ‘personal responsibility’ for improving their own standards of living. Cut off and effectively discriminated against by the State it can only be entrepreneurship, the taking of risks, and the acquisition of ever improving levels of education and expertise that explain the maintenance and improvement in living standards within the white community after 1994. [Here's a thought: descendants of white imperialistic colonisers getting the fuck out of South Africa! I support this for Israeli whites too, as well as U.S. American whites. Go back where you came from!]

Further examples of this growing independence from the State [read: dependence on historical legacy and contemporary forms of whites' racism] can be taken as far as to include reliance on private healthcare and security through which many whites now have access to far higher standards of service than those on offer through the public sector. [Yes, with wealth comes greater access to private systems of support.] This independence [dependence on maintaining white male supremacy] may even be considered to include the very large number of young white South Africans who have taken the risk [gasp!] to pursue careers in other parts of the world [white male supremacist parts?] even as they maintain close social, family, and economic ties with South Africa [read: inheritance rights]. [So some are leaving. Well, that's encouraging, if they forfeit those inheritance rights. And they will fare well by leaving. Far better than Black South Africans who leave and still have to contend with anti-Black racist discrimination and violence wherever they go. Whites from South Africa don't endure that when they settle down elsewhere.]

Arguably, therefore, the income and employment data above is early evidence that white South Africa might emerge as the unlikely [or not so unlikely] beneficiary of affirmative action and black economic empowerment. [Don't white men inevitably benefit from any system that is built from the bloody ground up on racist economic systems, values, and practices?] What is certain is that the independent and entrepreneurial mindset that may have been further invigorated by black economic empowerment and affirmative action will come to be a formidable economic asset. [My read of this: white men in South Africa will have the education and means--including through inheritance--to do whatever the fuck they want to do, because they still live in a deeply and profoundly white supremacist state.]

The second question is the converse of the first and is why so many African South Africans still appear to cling to the hope that Government driven affirmative action and empowerment policies offer them a real chance at escaping poverty. [Whites are "independent" while Blacks "cling". Whose state is it? There's your answer.] Over a decade of evidence now suggests that other than the establishment of a small African middle class, most Africans have been left behind. [And this comes as a surprise to whom?] The proponents of affirmative action and empowerment policy will argue that these policies have not failed but rather that they were not enforced or implemented properly by Government. [Wait! You mean the government holds onto white supremacist practices? And this comes as a surprise to whom?] Some on the left of the economic spectrum now even advocate granting the Government authority to nationalize private business in order to hand this ‘wealth’ over to the poor. [His language sort of portrays wealthy whites as adults and poor Blacks as children, doesn't he? Try: thieving, colonising historically inhumane whites handing over stolen and/or unjustly earned resources to Black South Africans. Try, making a system that remains unjust and unfair, more just and more fair. Capitalism is racist and sexist. It always is. So moving toward socialism might allow for some of that to dissipate.]

This mindset of ‘government will provide for me’ [that white men have enjoyed and benefited from since the government began] if only it was granted even greater powers and responsibility is likely to see affirmative action and empowerment policies continued. [Yes, as it should, until such time that whites have no greater status, wealth, social position, or esteem than Blacks.] It may even lead to more extreme economic policies including nationalization. [One can hope.] However, when one considers education data which shows that white children significantly outperform African children in school subjects such as science and mathematics [which, historically, are tools of the master race and were not quite so needed in non-industrial primal Indigenous societies that are sustainable and not destroying the Earth; Black societies were destroyed by whites; Blacks have never had the opportunity to obtain the same education with the levels of national encouragement that whites have enjoyed in South Africa] the suggestion that the failure of affirmative action and empowerment policy lies in weak enforcement seems implausible. So does the argument that white wealth lies primarily in mines and banks. If anything the record of white living standards after 1994 suggests that that wealth now rests primarily in the mindset and the skills-set [and in the bank accounts and homes and land] of that community which is an asset that the Government can never expropriate. The failure of public education alone [read: the racism embedded in all systems, not just in education] has sabotaged [read: fully intended to undermine] the chance of African South Africans gaining any broad benefit from affirmative action or black economic empowerment or that they will wrest much benefit from the confiscation of a major bank or mining company. [The economics of banking and mining are necessarily ecocidal and genocidal. All Western-form societies are both, as well as gynocidal.]

The difficulty of improving African living conditions will of course be even further compounded by the mindset that has been cultivated to believe that ‘government will provide’ [that whites historically and currently enjoy]. For there can be no chance of this [white male supremacist] mindset competing on an equal economic footing with the growing independence and self reliance on display in the white community. [This notion of "independence" is and always has been bullshit. CRAP. Because white wealth is never "independent" of  robbing Indigenous peoples of their land, resources, and human rights. Whiteness, itself, is entirely dependent on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in order to even exist.] Herein lies what may well become the cliché of South Africa’s future and irony of its recent past, that affirmative action and black economic empowerment policy disempowered its greatest proponents while empowering its most fervent critics. [And when does it ever do otherwise?]

South Africa’s ‘racial communities’ often appear to be stuck in perceptions of reality that bare little resemblance to facts about the country. As the French philosopher Pierre Valery commented, “a fact poorly observed is more treacherous than faulty reasoning”. As a result for many whites the argument that affirmative action will stall their economic progress is repeated verbatim even as their relatively high standards of living are maintained. For African South Africans the idea that the Government will lead their emancipation from poverty survives in support for the Government despite the growing evidence that such emancipation is now unlikely [until whites stop being dependent on pillaging African land of its resources, and the wealth generated from them, stolen from Blacks]. In politics perceptions are often more important than reality and therefore the unsubstantiated perceptions of both white and African South Africans come to dominate much discussion about racism and poverty in the country. [And the reality that white male supremacy lives in practices, structure, and system doesn't hurt whites any either!] What is unfortunately likely is that maintaining this status-quo [read: virulent and embedded white male supremacy] is going to cause future problems both for race relations and for the general stability of the country. [White racism tends to have a negative effect on "race relations" and "stability" if by stability, we mean a society founded on ethical principles and just practices.]

-          Frans Cronje [a white dood]