A Western Cape teacher has been summoned to a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday for claiming to be “African” in his CV, instead of sticking with his “official” coloured identity.
Glen Snyman, a teacher at Grootkraal Primary School in Oudtshoorn, allegedly self-identified as African when applying for a principal's job at another school in October 2017. He ultimately didn't get the job.
Almost three years later, late last month, he was summoned to a disciplinary hearing.
Snyman is an outspoken critic of race classification and founder of People Against Race Classification. He is particularly outspoken against the use of the term “coloured”, which he considers degrading.
But they chickened out. What a disappointment. They interviewed Debbie Schafer on the radio this morning and she didn't see the point. If you want to listen to Grootes talking to someone about it this morning you can listen here.
This is not a complicated legal issue. It has major political ramifications. But it's not a crime to represent yourself as any type of person irrespective of race and gender. It wouldn't take much of legal mind to know that the police are not going to pursue a fraud charge on these grounds. The Western Cape government had to block it. Said Schafer
she was shocked to discover that her department was charging someone because of how they choose to classify themselves.
“One of the many evils of apartheid was the classification of people by their so-called race. This was what many people have fought to rid our country of. So, I am understandably shocked to discover that my department is apparently charging someone because of how they choose to classify themselves. If this is in fact the case, it is anathema to me.
And we will not tolerate victimisation of people who do not conform to an artificial and arbitrary classification of who they are deemed to be,” Schäfer said in a statement.
“I have asked for all the information regarding this case as a matter of urgency because on the face of it, it does not appear to be in line with what this administration stands for.”
The racial classifications on job applications are usually used to meet broad-based economic empowerment criteria.
I wrote about this years ago, I've probably written about it a few times. One of the most read posts on this blog is the one on the JSE's BEE board. Somewhat provocatively entitled "How do we identify black? Simple, the JSE has become the guardian of such things", the post went into JSE's new board and when ID numbers stopped classifying people in terms of their race (they stopped doing this in 1986). In the post I wondered how the JSE were (or perhaps are) going to police the people trading on that board, mostly because it's not possible. Understand that this impossibility has existed since 1652 - this is how the apartheid system went about it
The 1950 Population Registration Act declared that all South Africans be classified into one of three races: white, "native" (black African), or colored (neither white nor 'native'). The legislators realized that trying to classify people scientifically or by some set biological standards would never work. So instead they defined race in terms of two measures: appearance and public perception.
According to the law, a person was white if they were “obviously...[or] generally accepted as White." The definition of 'native' was even more revealing: "a person who in fact is or is generally accepted as a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa." People who could prove that they were 'accepted' as another race, could actually petition to change their racial classification. One day you could be 'native' and the next 'colored'. This was not about 'fact' but perception.
If the race-obsessed Nationalists couldn't get it right then it's unlikely that the eternally incompetent, and very race-conscious ANC government would get it right. I can help them a bit though, the prevalence of Neanderthal DNA in a person might prove that they are Caucasian.
Still I wanted a court case. I know it'll never get there. But the process would have been fascinating to watch, I can see John Hlophe presiding - riveting.
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