SA parliament must debate affirmative action

The Deputy General Secretary of Solidarity, Dirk Hermann, says his union told the speaker on behalf of the Solidarity Movement’s more than 220000 members and another 30000 members of the public that the government’s approach to AA was purely racial and had to come to an end. The recent judgment in Solidarity’s court case against the Department of Correctional Services confirmed that the basic implementation of AA is not aligned with legislation.
Solidarity believes the solution for affirmative action does not only vest with the courts, and that the real solution has to be found through social dialogue. ‘Solidarity trusts that the debate in the court chambers will spill over into a national debate, the outcome of which will be a new national consensus on affirmative action. The best place for such a debate is in parliament. Government’s approach has evolved into a mathematical racial approach by which people have been replaced by numbers. This approach no longer has anything to do with redress but everything with race. South Africans, especially businesspeople, accept all too easily what government says as the only way of acting. What South Africa needs is a proper debate about ideas.
Solidarity had previously requested a parliamentary debate on affirmative action. But Stone Sizani, ANC chief whip, said through his spokesperson, Moloto Mothapo, that parliament does not debate issues to entertain the whims and fancies of pressure groups. Solidarity thereupon decided to get petitions from the public to demonstrate to the ANC that the need for a parliamentary debate on the current implementation of affirmative action is not just a whim and a fancy.