How to kibosh race issue

Here’s a shout-out to Oudtshoorn teacher Glen Snyman. At last, someone is exposing a nasty truth that has been skirted for too long: the ANC is as race obsessed as was its loathed predecessor, the National Party.

Snyman has caused consternation by self-identifying as an African. He now faces a disciplinary hearing ordered by the Western Cape education department for fraudulently passing himself off as an African male “whereas in truth your records indicate that you are a coloured male”.

Snyman’s “crime” was committed three years ago when he applied for a teaching post and in his curriculum vitae declared that he was African. In terms of the redress criteria, he would have been automatically given preference over coloured applicants.

The Snyman matter is one of those bizarre incidents emblematic of what a screwed up country we remain, despite 26 years of supposedly creating a just society. There’s a rich vein of apartheid era literature that explores the cruel dilemmas and personal tragedies of race classification.

Aside from invariably being disastrous, an obsession with race drops the nation into a rabbit hole of Lewis Carrol-levels of absurdity. In the apartheid years it was the eternal dilemma for mixed race people. One had to accept one’s second-class status and battle the odds. Or, for the fortunate few, “go white” and immeasurably improve their prospects.

But at the cost of cutting ties with any person or part of the past that could endanger that decision. Such horrors didn’t end in 1994. Although race classification is theoretically outlawed, it continues by sly proxy. The old legislatively enshrined categories of black, white, coloured and Indian/Asian remain in daily empowerment use.

During apartheid, blacks (whether you call “them” Bantu, Natives or Africans) were easy to categorise as “other” or, now, as “most deserving of redress”. And, in the ANC’s SA, whites (whether you call “them” Europeans or settlers) are readily identifiable as “least deserving”.

But it’s the coloureds who are always the meat in the sandwich. While many South Africans find the appellation “coloured” offensive, it is as useful to the ANC as it was for the Nats. This is the population that has always threatened to dilute the riches and privilege of the dominant group, because it can and will choose the racial niche of maximum advantage. That’s not an escape clause that exists for another disadvantaged minority, the Indian community.

Snyman’s actions, however, are not opportunistic. He is founder of the lobby group People Against Race Classification and is surely pleased that a strategy executed three years go is now bearing political fruit. While his ploy has left the DA government of the Western Cape red-faced, it should leave the ANC ashen-faced.

It can cause chaos with the government’s empowerment policies. In a world where self-identifying – whether it be sex, gender, or race – is the new rallying of the woke, the ANC would be in a human rights pickle.

If the post-1994 passivity over racial categorisation moved to defiance, the only solution would be legal mechanisms to determine race. The Race Classification Boards would have to be re-established.

William Saunderson-Meyer.

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