Ernest Mabuza
19 June 2008
Johannesburg — THE Pretoria High Court ruled yesterday that South Africans of Chinese descent should be defined as black for the purposes of the employment equity and broad-based black economic empowerment legislation.
The ruling means Chinese South Africans will now benefit under the country's black economic empowerment schemes, will have access to staff empowerment allocations by companies, and will be regarded as black for employment purposes.
There are about 10000 Chinese South Africans.
The ruling follows an eight-year battle by the Chinese Association of SA (Casa) to get Chinese South Africans included in the definition of "black people" in legislation designed to benefit previously disadvantaged groups.
Before 1994, Chinese South Africans were classified as coloured.
In the democratic era, the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act and the Employment Equity Act did not specify whether Chinese citizens qualified for consideration as disadvantaged people.
Employment equity and empowerment laws stated that "black people" was a generic term that meant Africans, coloureds and Indians.
Judge Cynthia Pretorius made the order drafted by the association an order of the court after Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa and Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla did not oppose the application.
The court order also ordered the ministers to pay the costs of the association, including the cost of two counsel.
George Bizos SC, for the association, told the court the issue was about the status of members of the Chinese community who were excluded from benefiting from the two acts.
"We contended that the provision was unconstitutional because members of the community of Chinese were in fact part of the discriminated people in the past. They were regarded as coloureds or Asians in the past," Bizos said.
He said it would be drastic if the association asked for the two acts to be declared unconstitutional on the grounds of inequality and suggested that amending them to include Chinese South Africans as black would solve the problem.
Bizos said although the ministers had originally filed a notice to oppose Casa's application, they eventually conceded the merits of the case in April and no longer opposed the application.
Casa chairman Patrick Chong said although the acts did not specifically exclude Chinese South Africans, the fact that Chinese were not mentioned created confusion.
Chong said that one bank classified Chinese South Africans as "black" for the purposes of the act while others declined to do so.
He said the association had been in discussions with the government to seek clarity on the status of Chinese South Africans. In 2006, a law firm representing Casa wrote a letter to Mdladlana, Mpahlwa and Mabandla demanding clarity on the status of Chinese citizens . When its endeavours failed, the association launched a high court application last year.
While the Freedom Front Plus welcomed the ruling, its youth leader, Cornelius Jansen van Rensburg, said that the ruling created an absurdity.
"A rich person immigrating from China will enjoy more privileges than a poor Afrikaner whose forefathers have lived here for over 300 years," he said.
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In the United States they classifed Mexicans as White. Too bad the Exiles during Aparthed didn't ask the Russians to Invade before the 1990's of course South Africa would had been Zimbabwe of Today if that ever happened.
South Africa,ou this is what happens when you give your country away,you go to china and walk down the streets they laugh at you because you are black. Never in a life time have I seen anything as stupid as you black people in South Africa. Now do you understand what Mugabe is doing and saying. I am not saying that I don't love you. But how can you let this happen?
Spink10 I agree with u totally. Where were these chineese citizens during the struggle? There is no way they faced the same level of oppression as the native blacks and the only reason they now want to be classed as blacks is for the money. The gov. is failing the native blacks. Now I can imagine that the Chineese and the Indians are gonna be the ones to benefit most from these social iniatives.
The government need to rephrased it from "black" to natives. Thus eliminate the hangers-on. I hope and pray that Zuma does a better job at defending the still volnerable black natives. After all it's because of this demographic why he is where he is.
in america chinese people are chinese people they are not classified under black or white maybe yellow
How come most of you people can't spell? and so what if the Chinese are classified as Black? Black is a COLOR not a person~ There are some people who classify Italians as "Black" Caucasians. Grow up and deal with it!
If ur house got robbed by chineese or indians would tell the police that they were black. U people r full of shit. Black is black, chineese is chineese and indian is indian. I swear it's like i'm talking to morons.
The more you divide people according to superficial differences, the longer you perpetuate the consciousness of this artificiality. India went along caste and linguistic differences and 60 years after independence, we are facing more issues of discrimination than before. People are now clamouring to be classified as backward and disadvantaged. And two-bit politicians are finding more and more minor differences of caste, tribe, sub-caste, sub-tribe to gain some visibility for themselves.
Continue what is being done and South Africa faces the same fate. Set a time for all these quota systems to be dismantled and ensure that the REALLY disadvantaged get the foundation they need to make it. After that foundation, they should be on their own.
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Okay what does South Africa classifed a Native North American as white