Funny that. I've been reading reports of the SA Institute of Race Relations for forever. I don't remember one from the apartheid era that "Affirmative action is killing babies". And, let's face facts: apartheid was a long and structured affirmative action programme - it was called job reservation then.
There can be little doubt that apartheid and its affirmative action appointees killed babies, but I feel that line to be cheap and lacking in intellectual rigour. A bit like writing a piece headlined "Out of touch white CEO's responsible for crippling platinum strike" - sexy and sure to get a read, but cheap and destructive.
To stand up the argument that "Apartheid affirmative action killed babies", you would have to argue that the bureaucrats who devised and oversaw racial budgets for health and which therefore had the effect of killing babies because malnutrition was much higher for black babies than others. You'd have to show disease patterns and burdens as well as reveal the inter-generational outcomes of Bantu Education - again tracing them to their affirmative action appointees, all of whom were white and male or their homeland proxies.
The requirements of complexity and rigour probably explain why the anti-apartheid turned anti-affirmative action crusader think-tank, the SA Institute of Race Relations never once put out a statement saying "Affirmative action killed babies" throughout its illustrious history of fighting apartheid.
Why then did it put out a statement saying "Affirmative action is killing babies" last week? Why did it do so without mentioning the babies who died: Lehlogonolo (the nine month old son of Kehapilwe Sehau), Onalenna (the one year old son of Maserame Mogorogi) and Kabo (the five month old daughter of Keabetswe Wageng)? Or without sending a research team to Bloemhof, the municipality in the North West where the three little ones died after drinking water infected with ecoli?
The unusual absence of rigour and research didn't matter. The headline went viral, resonating with a powerful strand in society that is virulently against affirmative action now, but was pretty acquiescent with it before. The preventable deaths of babies should make us outraged. But to turn their deaths into political fodder for an emotive campaign against affirmative action is to spit on their graves. I checked with the Institute last week - they had not sent a team out to the municipality to study their thesis before launching the campaign; neither had they been in touch with the families of the babies who were killed.