I recently laid a complaint with the Human Rights Commission about non-payment of grants to homes for the mentally disabled. The official complaint form requested my race, saying it was "required for statistical purposes only".

I felt really offended and wrote down "Human". At least they didn't have the Verwoerdian categories of White, Black, Coloured and Indian. But it is surely outrageous that this question can even be asked by the Human Rights Commission.

What does it matter to know the "race" of the complainant?

Yet there are lots of government forms that require identification by race, and it is enforced by legislation like the Employment Equity Act. I understand the need to set targets when redressing the discrimination of the past.

As in other areas of life, if you don't do this then it is unlikely that real progress will be made. But can something that promotes race consciousness be used to overcome the ill-effects of race discrimination?

You could argue that swinging the pendulum hard the other way will assist to get the ideal balance in the middle. The key thing is that anything like this should be temporary, and evaluated rationally to see if it actually works.

Preferential university admission for black students in America, for instance, has been shown to be counter-productive. When it was ditched in California, university admission and graduation rates for blacks actually rose. Instead of filling quotas at elite universities where many could not compete, black students were accepted in greater numbers throughout higher education institutions where their pass rates went up.

So good intentions must always be measured against outcome.

The Black Consciousness espoused by Steve Biko was a defensive measure to arouse essential self-worth in a demoralised population. But like Africanist Robert Sobukwe, he knew that there was only one race, the human race.

The question is whether in today's circumstances the retention of race categories helps or hinders true redress and the non-racial cause. The criticism of affirmative action world-wide is that it mainly helps those in designated groups who are already better placed to advance without special assistance

One can ask in South Africa whether the children of black business tycoons should benefit from the lowered admissions criteria that universities set for black students. Why should they get preference over a non-black applicant from a poor family?

Moreover, the advancement of the politically connected under guise of redress often hurts the broad mass of under-privileged people. Putting in inexperienced and unqualified people hurts them the most because they are most dependent on government services.

Frank Chikane, the former director-general of the Presidency, now says that the replacement of experienced people by political appointments "led to the collapse of the public service". This is an astounding admission. Just think how the shambles in Home Affairs, for instance, hit people who could not get jobs or grants because of delays in getting identity documents.

We should never overlook the merit principle. It should be expanded to boost all those who have achieved despite poverty and disadvantage. We are all human. Let's abandon mythical race categories and provide opportunities to everyone who shows that they deserve it.

Jack Bloom MPL is DA Leader in the Gauteng Legislature. This article first appeared in The Citizen.

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