RACIALISM'S THE ANSWER AT TOP UNIVERSITY

Dear Would-be Students,

         Do you know the story of the vulture that went round in ever decreasing circles until it eventually disappeared….

         That’s the censored version I’m using for decorum’s sake and so as not to corrupt the youth.

         Anyway what I’m getting at is that South African universities have a bad case of the vulture syndrome epitomised by the University of Cape Town (UCT).

         There the race track is far from level for everyone. And what’s more disturbing is that its Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price is so proud of it.

         Periodically he hits the headlines with up dates on this latest brand of social engineering.

         When I first wrote about this subject it was Funny Ha! Ha! unless you happened to be a White, Indian or a not Black enough student trying to get into this renowned establishment of higher learning.

         Now it has graduated to Funny Absurd but not many people are laughing especially young Whites and their parents.

DR PRICE TRYING TO EXPLAIN HOW
RACIALISM WORKS

         The idea of the policy was to give Blacks an artificial leg up because they had been discriminated against in all walks of life by the previous White apartheid Government.

         At the time of my first post the Black African National Congress had been in power running down the country for 17 years. It pretended that it stood for a non racial society when it was lying through its sparkling white teeth by doing its utmost to promote Blacks at every opportunity, at the expense of other races, particularly Whites.

         Priceless Max was reveling in it. At the University’s Medical School for instance Whites and Indians were expected to get at least 80% in their university entrance exams to stand a remote chance of even being considered for admission.

         Blacks only needed a mere 60% to walk in.

        Being the right COLOUR gets you the highest marks of all.

         Now 20 years since White rule ceased Price is in the news again with an even more baffling version of the policy he claims has now been changed so it is no longer based on race.

Will this be any help to the Whites who have been discriminated against as a reprisal for what the Whites only Government did when they weren’t even born then?

         However the gobbledygook Price told Chris Barron in an interview for the Sunday Times showed how difficult he is finding it to justify the indefensible. The longer the interview went on the more Priceless Max looked like that vulture I mentioned in the beginning.

         I hope Chris won’t mind if I lift a few quotes from his excellent report just to show you what I meant when I said that policy had reached the Funny Absurd stage. Actually it’s a lot worse but as I never went to university I can’t think of any more suitable words to describe it.

         Here’s part of the interview with my comments in brackets.

Barron: Why are you going to such pains to pretend that you will no longer be selecting on a race basis?

Price: We’re saying that race remains important, but that we don’t have to use race classification to achieve demographic targets.

Barron: So the bottom line is that race will remain as much of a factor as it is under the existing policy.

Price: Race will, race classification will not. (It’s hard to imagine how a person who speaks this kind of Double Dutch can become a vice-chancellor at a university).

Barron: In effect you’ll be selecting on the basis of race rather than merit?

Price: No. If we have two students who have 70% and one of them, whether black or white comes from a disadvantaged background, then that student will get in (The odds of a White being more disadvantaged than a Black are remote so this changes nothing).

Barron: What about the case of a black student who is accepted for medical school with 70% whereas the white student with 90% is rejected?

Price: Let’s bring it closer to reality. Probably 77% would get in above a white student with 90% (That sounds so much fairer and you can’t get more Priceless than that).

Barron: Whose interests are served by that?

Price: If you had a white student with the same background (in other words poor) with 77%, that white student would also get in above a white student (well off) with 90%. The idea is to give disadvantaged students the same opportunity as advantaged students (How can opportunities be equalised by excluding someone with 90%? In any case Price wandered off the point by compared White with White instead of White with Black).

         Max concluded by saying If we were to take all our applicants in this year 2014 for medical and judge them only on the marks they’ve achieved, there would only be about five or 10 African students in a class of 200 (Yet he’s still waffling away trying to make us believe that the policy has changed when it’s still as Black as ever). 

         It’s a very poor reflection on South Africa that after 20 years of Black rule being Black is the most important qualification to enable anyone to become a doctor through UCT’s Medical School.

         This might be okay for somebody learning to throw the bones to become a witch doctor, but it’s scary when the qualified could be transplanting hearts and doing other major operations.

All the University is doing is perpetuating apartheid that was so abhorred by the entire world when the previous White Government was in power. Only now it’s the other way round and that makes it – perfectly alright.

So Black is still the most beautiful colour and the policy vulture will remain flying around in ever decreasing circles with the difference being it will – NEVER DISAPPEAR
        Harmonious mixing of people of all colours doesn't have much of a future when universities teach How to play the race card to win as part of their curriculum.

Regards,

Jon, a Consumer Watchdog and if you ask me I would say that Dr Price’s master race plan badly needs a transfusion of mixed blood.

P.S. Will any of us live to see the day when South Africa has matured sufficiently to treat us all on merit rather than on COLOUR?

P.P.S. Chris congratulations on your no holds barred interview and the many other admirable ones you have done over the years reminiscent of the BBC’s Hard Talk.

Racist census to continue dividing a nation

Dear Statistician General Pali Lehohla,

         What’s it feel like to blow money on a grand scale on nothing more productive than bits of paper? And to make matters worse you are doing it without a thought for the majority who live in slums with nothing better to do than riot and trash the place.

         Eighteen years after racialism was supposed to have replaced 40 years of White domination that spawn the hated apartheid system in South Africa and kept Blacks as serfs you are still at it - classifying people according to colour. 

         Refresh my memory; what colour gets preference when Government jobs are dished out?

         Now that the Black African National Congress Government is in charge you are having an expensive census to put everyone in their place; Blacks, Whites, Coloureds, Indians, Chinese and any other colour of the rainbow nation that you can think of.

         It’s pure, unadulterated racialism.

         Surely we are all people now, all 50-million of us. So when your 300 000 part-timers call round at houses shortly, with those 75 question forms, everybody should refuse to complete the colour question.

         I hear we’ll be asked a host of things designed to improve the lives of everyone. Like: How often do you have sex? Have you done it outside your racial category? Have you had aids? If so how many times and in what racial group was the person who gave it to you?

          Sorry I’m wandering. What I really wanted to tell you is I’m organizing a National Census in opposition to your official one. I was shocked to read that you are only going to have the results of your one two years later when it’s completely out of date unless you expect us to put breeding on hold while you do your sums. And that’s stretching it even for African Time. And it’s going to cost a very reasonable R2.8 billion plus.

          I don’t know which Government official’s salary that equates to but no doubt the meddling press will tell us, if they are still allowed to by next year. I don’t suppose you’ll be happy about my rival census but South Africa’s a free country; at least it was yesterday.

          Mine will be a cut price one. With any luck you will have a lot to thank me for because it will make the official one unnecessary and the nation will save a packet.  Oh! I forgot your Government is not in the business of saving tax payer’s money. It’s on a glorious spending spree for the good of the few at the expense of the many.

          I’m calling for volunteers to go to their nearest shanty town and question just 10 hut owners and their families. Here’s what they will be asked.

          1. Have any of the ANC’s Promises become a reality for you and give us an idea of how they have improved your life.

            1.1 How long have you lived in abject poverty?

            1.2 How many times a year do you get a square meal?

            1.3 Have you been forced to connect electricity illegally?

            1.4 How many times has your shack been burnt down in the last year?

            1.5 How many people, above 20, live in your one roomed tin hut?

Then come the Billion Dollar questions as it were which you may not be too happy with, but I’m afraid I have to ask them to complete the picture.

            2 Have you heard of the Government Census scheduled for October 2011? If so answer the following:

            2.1 What would you do with R2.8-billion?

            2.2 Have you ever eaten a 14 page census form? If so did it alleviate your hunger?

            2.3 How many houses for the poor do you think could be built with that money?

            2.4 How many trees do you think would have to be cut down to produce the paper to record all the questions for 50-million people? And if you had the wood instead how long would it last your community when used for heating and cooking?

          I know it’s being a bit familiar but do you mind if I call you My Pali from now on; it’s so much friendlier? You have to be Pali to go into people’s homes and ask them all kinds of intimate questions.

Imagine how long it’s going to take, especially among unsophisticated people with huge families, to fill in forms with 75 questions. In our President’s house, as an example, it could take a week or more at a rough guess. What with all his wives and I don’t know how many children.

How does it help to know things like in the Western Cape 35 000 of us live in houses with brick walls and corrugated iron roofs while another 20 000 have houses with tiled roofs and no walls.

Your Government won’t do anything about it anyway.

At the end of the day My Pali the exercise won’t feed or house anybody and you will have blown enough to keep the poor in food for years. Is that something to be proud of?

                   WHEN OH! WHEN IS YOUR GOVERNMENT GOING TO GET ITS PRIORITIES RIGHT BEFORE OUR SIMMERING SQUATER CAMPS BOIL OVER INTO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY?

                 Yours,

       Jon, Classified: Unemployed, homeless, starving. Race: Other.