While Gardiner rightly states that his generation benefited from white privilege, his theory that once privileged means privilege in perpetuity is a fallacy. Today there are white people living in squatter camps around Pretoria. There are many whites who are living on the margins of poverty. Having been a ward councillor until 2016, I encountered a great deal of poverty among whites in my Bluff ward. Moreover, the new job reservation rules that require demographic representivity, discriminate strongly against whites and other minorities. Gardiner’s claim that the economy is “still very firmly in white hands,” is also inaccurate. Only 14% of the wealth of South Africa is in the hands of individuals of all races. 38% is controlled by foreigners and 48% by institutions like banks and conglomerates.

In deploring the bleak social circumstances that face the vast majority of South Africans who are not white and contrasting that with the favourable circumstances he and his family enjoy, Gardiner’s theory of adversity perpetuating poverty is challenged by the experience of the Indian community.

Marginalised as settlers during colonial times and subjected to discrimination until 1994, through their own initiative and enterprise the Indian community uplifted itself from the servitude of the cane fields and achieved prosperity and success in many areas of life.

Most whites do not “go about their lives unchanged” as Gardiner claims. They are acutely aware of the collapsing state of governance and society that impacts us all in a variety of ways. Those previously advantaged are no longer automatically privileged.

Living in a state of permanent self-abnegation because of the advantages his white skin has given him, is Gardiner’s choice. But it is not going to alleviate the circumstances that prevail in the country or change the past.

Sent into The Daily News and published, 30 May 2018.

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Whites were certainly privileged under apartheid. But the main props of apartheid-Group Areas, separate schools and job reservations – were abandoned by 1991. That was over a quarter of a century ago.

Since that time whites have lost whatever privileges they had. And whites born since 1994 are in fact less privileged than blacks because of affirmative action and demographic criteria applied to employment opportunities.

Mr Maimane needs to explain how I, as a white, am privileged today. I pay rates and taxes. I face the same risks in terms of crime as anyone else. My costs of living are no different from anyone else. My rights under the constitution are no different from anyone else. My vote is no more significant than anyone else’s vote. So where’s the “white privilege,” Mr Maimane?

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that by banging on about so-called white privilege the objective is to create a surrender complex. Whites are just nine percent of the population. It is impossible for that minority to uplift the black majority. Even if every white gave away half his property or income it would make no material difference to the mass of black poverty. In any case, there are whites today living in squatter camps; others are living on the margins of destitution.

This whole so-called white privilege issue is a misnomer and a red herring that the DA leader has copied from the ANC in a perverse attempt to gain black votes. The DA used to be very different from the ANC. Clear-blue water, they said, distinguished the DA from the ANC. Well, not anymore. Until the DA formulates MERIT as its cornerstone policy, it will be seen as merely the moderate version of the ANC just like the old United Party was the moderate version of the National Party.

Sent into The Mercury and published, 16 May 2018.

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Its promoters include bitter socialists like Terry Bell (City Press, May 13), the ANC, advocates of moderate anarchy like Julius Malema and, not to miss the red herring bus, Mmusi Maimane of the DA.

It is a historical reality that ruling classes always enjoy the privilege. Therefore, there can be no debate that whites were privileged under colonialism and apartheid. But that’s the past, It’s gone. It’s water under the bridge. No amount of hand-wringing can change that.

Instead, the question to be asked is: What purpose is served in demonising whites for a past they can’t change and a new white generation that had nothing to do with life before 1994?
How does that promote nation-building and racial harmony?

Of course, politically, the answer is very obvious: whites are being made scapegoats for the faults and failings of the new political rulers. That said, it is total claptrap to claim that white privilege has exacerbated black poverty and inequality. Here’s why:

• ANC restrictive labour policies have discouraged wider employment practices and hobbled economic growth. Whereas unemployment stood at 3,2 million in 1994, thanks to worldwide
  sanctions and disinvestment promoted by the ANC, by 2017, after 23 years of liberated ANC rule, unemployment had grown to 8,3 million.
• Blacks have benefited hugely as a result of demographically based preferment policies on procurement and employment at the expense of minorities.
• Whereas the civil service was once white-dominated, it is now almost exclusively black.
• Statistics show that blacks now outnumber whites in the high-end living structure.
• Cadre deployment and state capture have done nothing to benefit the army of black unemployed.
• Education standards have declined under the ANC to the point where Dr Mamphela Ramphele (widow of Steve Biko) has remarked that Bantu education was better than what schools under the ANC are producing. Poor literacy and numeracy, thus, have further disadvantaged employment prospects.

History shows that the marginalisation of minorities produces two outcomes: emigration and/ or self-preservation. Thus, minorities in South Africa are increasingly entrepreneurial because employment opportunities in government and corporates are demographically limited by the new job reservation legislation.

Whereas minorities survive through their own initiative and enterprise, the biggest mistake the ANC has made in to promote the view that government is the source and solution for all social needs. Thus, socialist welfarism has now reduced 18 million to dependence on state grants for survival.

Black inequality and poverty existed before 1994. But its subsequent exacerbation and extenuation is entirely the result of the ANC’s socialist policies.

Sent into The Mercury and published, 14 May 2018.

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