LETTER: SA’s social engineering woes

Columnist Peter Bruce writes that “the boardrooms and executive suites of easily the majority of the companies at the peak of our economy are stuffed full of men and women of all shades of black” (“Waiting in vain for BEE boffins to make investment case”, June 19).

Yet we have one of the worst-performing economies in the world. So is he saying that employing blacks is bad for business?

This is the problem with Benjamin Disraeli’s “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. They offer too many ways to skin a cat. The example I always like to quote is that a few years back SA was lauding itself that it had more women in parliament and the government than even the Scandinavian countries. To which I’d always respond: given the performance of our government, does this mean women are bad at governing?

Any form of social engineering inevitably ends up creating a circle that can’t be squared, or a web of unfairness, injustice and active persecution that can’t be justified. As with apartheid, good luck justifying that to the world.

Stuart Meyer
Via BusinessLIVE

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