‘Mugabe’ Attitude Counteracts Aspirations

I WOULD like to make a comment on Mr Lazarus Jacobs’s article of August 4 on BEE.

It is a ‘Mugabe attitude’ to say that during the apartheid era the whites had everything so now the blacks should have everything. This counteracts the heroic aspirations for reconciliation expressed by our earthly saviour, Nelson Mandela, and as a matter of fact, also by our founding president (or so were the gist of his words at Independence).It is no improvement on apartheid.Not many whites (and I wish I could say NONE) have something against employing or working side by side with blacks in top management positions, but the problem with BEE arises when people are unqualified to do the job.In the long run this will have a disastrous effect on the economy of not only the company concerned, but the whole country.Do we want to be like Zimbabwe, with the highest inflation rate in the world? It is true that the apartheid regime allowed for top positions to be reserved for whites only, but these whites also had to be qualified to do their work.Today, with the demands for AA and BEE, companies are desperate to have black faces amongst their leading staff, whether qualified for the job or not.The repercussion of this is that it again creates an image of blacks being incompetent – an attitude we want to prove wrong! By the way, I am white, but I didn’t inherit my house from my apartheid forefathers – I studied and worked hard for it, and that is what makes me advantaged.Advantaged Via e-mail Note: Real name and address provided – EdThis counteracts the heroic aspirations for reconciliation expressed by our earthly saviour, Nelson Mandela, and as a matter of fact, also by our founding president (or so were the gist of his words at Independence).It is no improvement on apartheid.Not many whites (and I wish I could say NONE) have something against employing or working side by side with blacks in top management positions, but the problem with BEE arises when people are unqualified to do the job.In the long run this will have a disastrous effect on the economy of not only the company concerned, but the whole country.Do we want to be like Zimbabwe, with the highest inflation rate in the world? It is true that the apartheid regime allowed for top positions to be reserved for whites only, but these whites also had to be qualified to do their work.Today, with the demands for AA and BEE, companies are desperate to have black faces amongst their leading staff, whether qualified for the job or not.The repercussion of this is that it again creates an image of blacks being incompetent – an attitude we want to prove wrong! By the way, I am white, but I didn’t inherit my house from my apartheid forefathers – I studied and worked hard for it, and that is what makes me advantaged.Advantaged Via e-mail Note: Real name and address provided – Ed