You have only to contemplate for a moment the scale of the impact of dysfunctional education in SA to recognise how pathetically misdirected, as a transformative tool, are the newly expanded ministerial powers to set numerical targets for the “equitable representation” of people from “designated groups” across the economy.

Unless, of course, the objective is something other than creating the conditions for the flourishing society SA could become and deserves to be. Who could possibly be persuaded that demographic representivity by fiat could be a credible objective when, as economist Thabi Leoka was recently quoted as saying, the country’s matric certificate is “not worth the paper it’s written on”...

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