JOHANNESBURG - President Thabo Mbeki has warned that if the white minority continues to complain about ‘affirmative action' they risk bringing a much harsher approach down on their heads. This was the gist of a letter sent by Mbeki to Pik Botha in July last year, after the former National Party minister of foreign affairs publicly criticised the way in which ‘affirmative action' was being implemented by the African National Congress government.

Yesterday, Rapport reported on the content of Mbeki's letter and Botha's reply. The newspaper said that it was provided with both letters by Botha after he had notified Mbeki's office of his intention to do so.

The exchange goes back to the publication of The Naked Emperor: Why Affirmative Action Failed by Dirk Hermann, the deputy general of the Solidarity trade union. In the book Hermann critiqued the way in which the end goal of "affirmative action" had shifted under the ANC towards the creation of equality of outcomes. "The end result of affirmative action" Hermann writes, "must then be that the population demographics are reflected in the workplace." This is a goal which proceeds to justify "gross racial discrimination" against young white South Africans (and others.)

At a luncheon organised to discuss the book Botha condemned the way in which ‘affirmative action' was being applied. According to a report in The Weekender, (Saturday July 14 2007) he told the gathering: "To think that we would have agreed that children who were at school in 1994, say, could not apply for jobs on an equal footing, is simply ridiculous."

"Remedies in terms of the constitution could be positively effected" Botha pointed out, "by advancing the social situation of people in different spheres: education, health care, housing, job creation, skills development and economic participation. How successful have the central, provincial and local authorities been in achieving this? They received the power and the money to do this. Yet as of old they are driven by a fatal obsession. With the NP it was apartheid, with the ANC it is an obsession with quotas based on demographic racial representation."

Reports of these remarks in the weekend press prompted an eight page letter from Mbeki to Botha on Tuesday July 17.

In his reply Mbeki stated that the constitution's provisions for the "achievement of equality" refer to the eradication of the "deeply entrenched inequalities" that were the product of "centuries of colonialism and apartheid."

These, Mbeki wrote, still endure into the new South Africa. "In many respects, our country's socio-economic profile continues to be defined, most visibly, by its colonial and apartheid past. This relates to elements such as ownership of wealth, distribution of income, the poverty profile, access to the professions and the management echelon, land distribution, the human settlement patterns, etc."

The white minority, Mbeki argued, should be grateful that the ANC has not gone much further and faster in dismantling these ‘racial imbalances.' Instead the liberation movement has stood "as a buffer between a deeply aggrieved black majority and a white minority that seems mercilessly insensitive to the grievous harm that was done to millions, in its name."

Botha's insistence that the ANC follow a more measured approach was, Mbeki suggested, an attempt by the "former oppressors" to take away from the "formerly oppressed" their newly won right to "determine the future of our country!"

Mbeki warned Botha that his comments suggest to the black majority - represented as it is by the ANC - that "our efforts to ‘appease' the white community have been in vain."

"These masses conclude that nothing would ever succeed to persuade white South African society to consider itself part of a black and white society of equals, and to work towards the achievement of this objective."

Once the black masses come to understand that "even the little that we have done in terms of affirmative" is viewed by white society as "being entirely unacceptable" they will come to the conclusion that if "we are condemned for the little we have done... we might as well be condemned for the bigger things we can do" - and embark on a programme of far more "radical change."

According to Rapport Botha replied to Mbeki in a letter on Thursday July 19 2007. He wrote "You know that we couldn't, and I couldn't, have agreed to a process that would exclusively be based upon demographic representivity."

"You will certainly agree that young white children, who were in school in the 1990s and had nothing to do with apartheid, should not be punished for the sins of their fathers or grandfathers."