SA - a place for everyone?

Abstract

A small furore about a big issue was recently created when the ANC Youth League’s Julius Malema strongly criticised the dominance of the state’s ‘economic cluster’ by individuals drawn from ‘minorities’. It appeared that he was not alone in this concern. The individuals referred to in the ‘cluster’ were Pravin Gordhan, Ebrahim Patel, Rob Davies, Barbara Hogan and Gill Marcus. The ‘minorities’ involved, making sense only if we accept as valid apartheid’s race classification through the Population Registration Act of 1950, are then coloureds (for surely Trevor Manuel can’t escape, and has not been exempt from such categorisation in the past), whites and Indians. Of course, the general notion of ‘minority’ relies on a notion of an identifiable ‘majority’, and here Malema identified that dominant group as ‘we, black people’ and regretted the absence of ‘an African child’ as Governor of the Reserve Bank. He threatened an ‘uprising’ unless the issue was properly addressed.