‘Chinese fight to be black’

The headline above is taken from the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, and gives an idea of what a weird country your correspondent’s homeland of South Africa is.

South Africa has a set of laws called the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act (BBBEE), which is intended to right some of the wrongs of apartheid. Under BBBEE, black, Indian and what South Africans called ‘coloured’ people enjoy certain rights such as preferential treatment when applying for jobs or university entrance.

Chinese people, who were discriminated against during the apartheid years, have not been able to enjoy those benefits.

This is from the Mail & Guardian article titled “Chinese fight to be black’:

After years of waging a low-key campaign to be recognised as black under South Africa’s laws of redress, local Chinese are squaring up to the government in the High Court.

The Chinese Association of South Africa (Casa) wants to seek a declaratory order for South African Chinese to be treated as coloured and benefit from the Employment Equity Act and the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act.

…Historians Melanie Yap and Dianne Man describe the community of between 10 000 and 20 000 as “one of the smallest and most identifiable minority groups in arguably the most race-conscious country in the world. Too miniscule in number to warrant any serious … attention … [they are] unknown and largely forgotten.”

Casa’s Patrick Chong said his organisation took up the campaign when Chinese employees started differing with their employers over their classification under the Employment Equity Act, and whether they were entitled to affirmative promotion. “We had meeting upon meeting with the department of labour,” said Chong, “but they refused to give an official interpretation of the Act.”

…Darryl Accone, author of All Under Heaven: The Story of a Chinese Family in South Africa, remarked that the underlying problem was one of perceptions. “People imagine the Chinese were somehow white or honorary whites … a confusion with the Japanese, who did have honorary white status.

“But the government has no excuse — they know the Chinese were classified [under apartheid] as either non-European or non-white.”

Thanks to DK for the links