Coloureds are on their own – Solidarity
15 November 2015
While battle orders were being prepared this week prior to the largest affirmative action case yet in South Africa, the Coloured employees of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) are fighting a lonely battle. This is according to trade union Solidarity concerning its affirmative action court case against the DCS to be heard in the Constitutional Court next week.
According to Dirk Hermann, Chief Executive of Solidarity, with the upcoming municipal elections next year, political parties are keeping mum about the case. “The Cosatu trade union, Popcru, has decided to act against these members as friend of the court; the state is pulling out all stops against them; even the South African Police Service has joined the fray as friend of the court against them; and no civic organisation has stepped in for them as friend of the court,” Hermann says.
The three-year battle between Solidarity and the DCS is about the lawfulness of the DCS’s affirmative action plan, which is aimed at enforcing the national racial demography in every province.
According to Hermann a negative outcome in the case will have far-reaching consequences for the Coloured community in the Western Cape. “If it is found that affirmative action plans enforcing the national racial demographics in a province such as the Western Cape is lawful, it would mean that Coloured South Africans will have to be managed downward from their provincial representation of 52% to approximately 9%, the national figure, and consequently there will be about 1 million Coloured South Africans too many in the Western Cape. The effect for other minorities such as the Indian community in KwaZulu-Natal, the Coloured community in the Western Cape and also white South Africans in the rest of South Africa will be equally drastic,” Hermann says.