A FAMOUS GROUSE

WAY back at the dawn of time, almost 65 years ago, a number of citizens in what is now the greater Cape Town metropole would have received the following official notice from the Population Registrar:

“Sir/Madam: (1) I have to inform you that according to the information at my disposal there exists a measure of doubt as to the racial group to which you and your family belong.

“(2) Unless you can, therefore, within three weeks of the date of this letter, furnish me with proof in the form of certificates or affidavits by at least one or two of the following, namely: (a) Officer in charge of a police station, (b) School principal, (c) Minister of your church, (d) Employer, (e) Senator, Member of Parliament or Provincial Council; and at least a further two certificates or affidavits by family friends that you and your family are regarded and accepted by them as White persons, I shall be compelled to register you for purposes of the population register as belonging to the racial group which would seem to be most clearly indicated by the information at my disposal and to issue your identity card accordingly.”

The letter was quoted in the Cape Times, 22 September 1960. According to Ben Maclennan’s Apartheid: The Lighter Side (Chameleon Press, 1990), the list of possible referees was later extended to include a mayor, town clerk or chairman of an agricultural union.

The bureaucratic nature of the letter all but masked the absurdity and cruelty of the times. This was the notorious age of the pencil test, although the means of identifying race was by no means restricted to shoving a government-issue HB into a head of curly hair. As the Cape Times reported on 21 July 1956: ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

“These methods have been reported in Johannesburg as being used by the Race Classification Boards to determine whether a man was Native or Coloured: A soccer player is a Native, a rugby player is a Coloured. A high bed is Coloured, a low bed Native.”

Such concerns were still prevalent two decades later. This from the Sunday Express, 18 May 1975: 

“Stringent government tests to ensure that White couples adopt only White babies include a check to see if the nappies are hiding dark patches — what nurses at Mowbray Maternity Hospital call ‘blue bums’. Apparently most Coloured babies have these dark patches on their bottoms when they are born.”

That was back then, in another place and time, and you may believe that we have all moved on from such madness. But no. Last month, the labour minister, Nomakhosazana Meth, told Parliament that some 20 000 interns will shortly be appointed as “labour inspectors” to ensure that businesses are complying with employment equity legislation. 

Her department currently employs about 2000 of these individuals and, judging by recent reports, they have clearly been very busy. According to Sunday World, Meth is now in possession of a comprehensive document revealing that the majority of businesses “across the country” have failed to meet their regulatory requirements. In short, employees were not black enough or, if they were, too foreign. “The private sector,” Meth has pronounced, “is found wanting.”

This being the 21st century, it would seem that the pocket calculator has replaced the pencil in such matters. Meth’s inspectors reportedly visited 2 681 workplaces nationwide between 17 and 20 September and found an overall compliance rate of just 49 per cent. Gauteng topped the rankings with a 72 per cent compliance rate, followed by Mpumalanga at 55 per cent.

More than R10-million in fines — or “monetary corrections” as the new bureaucratese has it — were doled out to errant employers. Almost 2 000 foreign nationals were found at workplaces, and 81 arrested. The highest number of these were recorded in the Western Cape and Gauteng.

To be fair, these “blitz inspections”, as News24 called them, also revealed issues of underpayment of wages, inadequate health and safety measures and other illegal employment practices. 

But race remains a primary focus. It certainly is a principal concern for Meth. Last month, she was questioned by ANC MP Sello Maeco on transformation in the financial sector. She responded that white people still dominated the sector, with representation of 58.8 per cent. Black representation, by comparison, was 18 per cent. This demonstrated, she told Parliament, a clear need to “expedite employment equity policies”.

Later, Freedom Front Plus MP Heloïse Denner wondered whether Meth’s department would ever “do away with race-based legislation”. Meth replied: “It will be difficult to redress the imbalances of the past merely by ignoring race… Unfortunately, my department is not intending to do away with those laws.”

“Unfortunate” is perhaps too mild a description in this regard. As Gabriel Crouse, a Fellow at the Institute of Race Relations, has pointed out, the consequences of non-compliance are costly — and could drive businesses into bankruptcy. He writes in Daily Maverick:

“The [Employment Equity Act], since 1998, has provided that a ‘labour inspector … has the authority to enter’ businesses, and ‘question and inspect' employers and employees, pursuant to the law. The EEA in its amended form, provides for fines for repeated non-compliance with these inspections, and the race targets they aim at, of 10% of annual turnover. That would drive most businesses bankrupt. So, the stakes are high.”

Whatever training these new “labour inspectors” may or may not receive, Crouse maintains they will not be able to answer this simple question: “How will [you] know whether someone is telling the truth about their race?”

There is no workable legal standard here, he argues. “The notion that any department can simply say ‘whatever your apartheid classification was, or would have been, that is what it is for us, too’, does not work, because in the apartheid system it was legally possible to reclassify — and thousands upon thousands of people did so.”

But perhaps there is no need for a legal standard. After all, as the then interior minister, PK le Roux, told the House of Assembly in March 1967: “There is no-one on this side who does not know what we mean by a full-blooded non-white person.”

The same presumably for a full-blooded non-black person. There are people who are quite clearly experts in these matters, it would seem.

Bridging the abyss

A recent American poll suggests that if women were barred from voting in next month’s US presidential election, Donald Trump would be returned to the White House with an overwhelming majority. The NBC poll found that men favour Trump over vice president Kamala Harris by 12 points, 52 per cent to 40 per cent. 

Similarly, if men were denied the franchise, Harris would be swept into office by a landslide: women voters favour Harris over Trump by a staggering 21 points, 58 per cent to 37 per cent. 

This, according to Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, represents a 33 point gulf so wide that “the phrase ‘gender gap’ doesn’t do it justice”. The election, he writes, is “increasingly looking like a war between men and women”. 

It’s not difficult to understand why this is. Trump’s misogyny is repellent to millions of women. They are also angered by the withdrawal of the constitutional right to abortion, a decision by six supreme court judges, three of whom were Trump appointees. It may have delighted right-wing evangelical Christians, but the decision mobilised women to vote against Republicans in the 2022 mid-term elections.

However, just as women are driven away, men are drawn to Trump. This is particularly striking among Gen Z voters, those aged between 18 and 29. According to polling by the New York Times/Siena, there’s a massive 51 point gap in this group. Young men, many of them without college degrees and men of colour, feel socially and economically disadvantaged by changing gender roles; they regard Captain Bone Spurs as a “champion of traditional manhood” and identify with the image of “unapologetic machismo” he attempts to exude.

This does not mean that Gen Z men are shifting rightwards en masse, the NYT reports. They’re still more likely to identify as Democrats rather than Republicans. And when it comes to reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, even young Republicans are not necessarily socially conservative.

That said, the attitudes of women voters have alarmed some hardline Republicans. There is considerable anger, for example, at Taylor Swift’s support for Harris. Within 24 hours of her endorsement, which she signed “Childless Cat Lady”, nearly 340 000 people visited the US voter registration website, vote.gov, using a link shared by the singer. A rightwing backlash is growing. One report has emerged of a campaign in Arizona allegedly urging women to let their husbands “vote for your household” instead of casting their own votes.

Are American voters on the brink of a weird gender war, as the Atlantic magazine recently suggested? 

If so, inspiration for a truce or a rapprochement of sorts may come from ancient Greece, the very birthplace of democracy. 

First performed in 411 BC, Lysistrata, a comedy by Aristophanes, is an account of a mission to end the Peloponnesian War between the city states of Athens and Sparta through a sex strike. By withholding sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers, the women successfully force their menfolk to negotiate for peace.

But could a similar strike favour Harris next month? To promote such a radical campaign, I imagine a catchy pop tune with the chorus: “Don’t come home with lovin’ on your mind/If you’re votin’ for the guy with the large behind.” 

My people are standing by should Ms Swift wish to get on board this project. She should hurry though. Time is few, as we say here at the Slaughtered Lamb (“Finest Ales & Pies”) — although usually only in the context of last rounds.