Carol Paton says the DA’s new post-BEE policies are "conservative", even "ultraconservative" (DA’s growth creates identity crisis around race and liberalism, August 14). Actually, they are not. It is nationalism that is conservative. Supporting class, not race, in seeking redress is far closer to progressivism than the ANC’s nationalist alternative. Whereas a focus on race would and does provide "redress" to extremely rich and powerful people simply because they were born black, a focus on class and poverty will ensure it really is the poor who benefit from redress policies. Under our emerging new policy, most, if not all, of these beneficiaries will be black, but the black middle and upper classes will not be able to home in on redress policies they no longer need. We do not think it a good idea to continue granting "disadvantaged" status to people who live in Hyde Park, send their children to Roedean and Michaelhouse, and then perhaps to Oxford or Brown University, and who have pr...
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