Court Rules Chinese in South Africa Should Benefit from Affirmative Action Programs | Voice of America - English
Chinese residents in South Africa have won a landmark court case that will allow them to benefit from affirmative action programs intended to help disadvantaged blacks.  The court has ruled, in effect, that Chinese are black people, too.  For VOA, Terry FitzPatrick explains in this report from Cape Town.
The owners of Zonnebloem Bakeriesare of Chinese descent, but they are South African citizens, born andraised here. Alice and Patrick Chong are proud of the business theyhave built. They provide a variety of baked goods to hotels andrestaurants. "We have a croissant table, a Danish table, a bread table, a muffin table," explains Alice Chong. "All of the bread products over here are made from scratch," adds PatrickChong. "Wedon't use pre-mixes. This is the bread that was baked from days goneby. We still use the original recipes of bread." But the Chongs are angry about a certificate tucked away on a shelf in their office. "This is my classification," Alice says. Thecertificate is the bakery's BEE rating. That stands for Black EconomicEmpowerment, it is South Africa's program to give black-owned companiesa helping hand to correct inequality created during apartheid. Businesses are currently being audited, and those with good BEE ratingsget preferential treatment. "One" is the best score a business canget. "Eight" is the worst. Alice Chong is not happy with the score onher certificate. "I'm supposed to be faxing this to my customers to show them I'm a "four"," she says. TheChongs did not get a better score because South Africa's blackempowerment rules classified them as whites. The Chongs say that isunfair and, along with other members of the Chinese Association ofSouth Africa, they sued the government. The argument in their lawsuitwas simple: Chinese were regarded as people of color duringapartheid. Like blacks, they endured discrimination. So, the Chongssay it is wrong to now classify Chinese as white. "To me it's a slap in the face. It is apartheid in reverse," Alice Chong says. "Yes, we weren't white enough in the old days, and we definitely aren't black enough now,"  adds Patrick Chong. "Apartheid in reverse," quips Alice. Therules regarding ethnic Chinese made work difficult for the man whosecompany conducted the black empowerment audit of the Chongs' bakery. "Allright, what we have is a file of a client in terms of all theinformation that we would review when we go through the whole rating,"says Pieter Carstens. Carstens' firm, Empowerdex,evaluates if a company has enough black owners, managers, employees andsuppliers to get a good BEE score. "Moving on, skills development, on-the job-training," he says. Carstenssays the government's new race-classification rule for Chinese wasbased on historical patterns of international trade. "Theylook at what type of access those individuals would have had to SouthAfrica during the apartheid years," he says. "They would say Chineseindividuals were having free access, certainly with the fishingtrawlers coming around the coast and coming into the harbor, and assuch they were not disadvantaged." The South African governmentdeclined to comment on its BEE policy or the lawsuit. But othersexpressed support for the Chinese. "Anybody who washistorically disadvantaged, and that person couldn't vote because ofrace, that person is entitled to BEE," explains Mbulelo Bikwani, an influentialmember of South Africa's Black Management Forum. "So, if those Chinese,they were not allowed to vote, they are entitled." This week,the South African government switched course, and decided not to opposethe lawsuit. Wednesday, a court ruled that ethnic Chinese arepreviously disadvantaged persons who deserve the same benefits asblacks under the nation's affirmative action rules. The Chongs saythe case closes a difficult chapter in South Africa's painful historyof racism. The Chongs say that all victims of apartheid deserve equaltreatment today.