http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/25/southafrica.race

Chinese South Africans have won the right to be classified as 'black' - how ironic
Marcel Berlins The Guardian, Wednesday June 25, 2008
Article history
The Chinese population of South Africa suffered much discrimination under apartheid. They were not treated as badly as were black South Africans, but were still subject to many indignities and prohibitions. They fought hard against their second-class status and eventually, even before the end of apartheid, most of the legal barriers were removed or disregarded.

So there was something ironically surreal in last week's decision by South Africa's high court that the Chinese - at their own request - should be classified as black. The motive was financial - access to various black economic empowerment schemes available to the victims of apartheid. To qualify, they had to be regarded as black. Hence the court case.

This is not the first time that the 10,000 Chinese South Africans have been caught up in the country's ludicrous categorisation farces. I was in South Africa when a delegation of Japanese businessmen arrived for talks on trade in the 1960s, when the Chinese were still under strict restrictions. Their racial status was easily taken care of - the government declared them to be "honorary" whites. But how would it work in practice? Hardly anyone at the time had the faintest idea how to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese people, even supposing they were aware that the latter, legally speaking, were now Caucasians. But what if a newly whitened Japanese person was treated as though they were Chinese? A team of government officials was sent out to explain to puzzled restaurant owners and other service providers that the east Asian-looking gentlemen soon to enter their premises were to be served politely rather than turfed out unceremoniously. It caused
great confusion at the time, but was clearly successful in business terms - the Taiwanese and Koreans followed, also rewarded with the greatest honour South Africa could confer - whiteness.

Lord Carlile of Berriew probably knows more about terrorist threats to Britain than any other person in the country. He's the independent reviewer of anti-terrorist legislation, and in order to do his job he has to know what the actual and potential threats are before he can assess whether or not the measures in place to meet them are adequate, insufficient, wrongly focused, unnecessary or excessive. He is the repository of a lot of sensitive information, some of which he has to keep confidential, for obvious reasons. But it's what he has revealed that worries me.

His annual report to the government, made public this week, contains a warning of the risk of light aircraft and executive jets being used by terrorists as "flying bombs". He points out that small airports lack adequate security. But I was disturbed on two grounds. One was that it seemed to be yet another example of unnecessarily and exaggeratedly scaring the public about something they can do nothing about. This happens too often. A police chief or government minister tells us, by way of a frightening story in the newspapers, of dreadful terrorist plans afoot. Usually, the motive is to persuade us to support some outrageous scheme to increase police powers or other anti-terrorist measures. My second reservation is that Lord Carlile's small planes fear might put a new idea into a potential terrorist's mind. Every extremist has probably already thought of doing something nasty to a prominent national symbol. But he may not have considered using tiny
aircraft. The Carlile report is just one example of many that raises the question: are we - police, government, media - revealing too much? Is there not a case for less openness and honesty?

The contrary argument is that we have a right to be told of the dangers we face. Yes, but surely not if we can do nothing about it and our knowledge leads only to additional worries. There is an added difficulty because, quite understandably, the authorities can't tell us the details of what they know, we have to have confidence in the accuracy of their warnings. What I too often find is that we do not have that faith. We are too inclined to be suspicious that we're not being given the truth. That may be dangerous.

"Manufactured apologies" are defined in my personal dictionary - though admittedly in no official one - as "using a form of words which, though giving the immediate impression that those who offer them are sorry for something they have said or done, turn out on closer inspection to mean nothing of the sort". Andy Burnham's so-called letter of apology to Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, is the latest example. Did he express regret for his remarks about her "late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls" with Tory MP David Davis?

No, only regret that what he wrote about her and David Davis caused offence. That's not the same thing. He resorted to the manufactured apology.

It seemed vaguely sincere, but a second reading shows that he was merely exculpating himself, and putting the blame squarely on Chakrabarti. "The last thing I set out to do was to cause any personal offence to you, but if that is what has happened by the misinterpretation of my remarks" (note the if caveat) "then I regret that." In other words, the fault is Chakrabarti's.

This week Marcel read Metropole, by the Hungarian novelist Ferenc Karinthy: "A man in a strange city whose inhabitants speak only a language he doesn't understand a word of; and they have no idea what he's saying. Yup, you've got it: Kafkaesque." Marcel briefly dreamed that "Carla Bruni was married to Gordon Brown, Sarah to Nicolas Sarkozy. Boring."


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4168245.ece

June 19, 2008
We agree that you are black, South African court tells Chinese

The Chinese, who first came to South Africa when gold was discovered in the 1870s, welcomed the ruling
Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg
They have already taken over much of the continent’s economy. Now they have gone one step farther. The Chinese in South Africa were officially declared “black” yesterday.
In a landmark ruling the Pretoria High Court accepted the Chinese as a “previously disadvantaged” group. This means that – at least in legal terms – Chinese South Africans will now be included in the definition of black people in legislation covering lucrative black economic empowerment (BEE) deals.
The controversial BEE policy, under which large companies have to surrender a percentage of their equity to black-run entities, is aimed at reversing decades of apartheid bias. It covers Africans, Coloureds (mixed-race people) and Indians but has been criticised widely as a politically correct form of theft by ruling party cronies.
Under white minority rule the Chinese were classified as Coloureds. In a decision that illustrated the difficulty of applying racial segregation Japanese people were given “honorary white” status – partly because they were wealthier and fewer in number than the Chinese.
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When the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act and the Employment Equity Act, the two BEE legislative pillars, were adopted, the Chinese were left out and claimed that they had been discriminated against twice – first by the whites, now by the blacks.
The ruling yesterday is the culmination of an eight-year struggle by the Chinese Association of South Africa (Casa) to obtain clarity from the Government as to the status of Chinese people since the end of white rule in 1994. Patric Chong, the chairman of Casa, said: “As Chinese South Africans we were officially classified as ‘Coloured’ and suffered under the same discriminatory laws prior to 1994. The logical inference was thus that Chinese South Africans would automatically qualify for the same benefits as the ‘Coloured’ group, post1994. This was not the case and Chinese South Africans suffered a second round of unfair discrimination.”
None of the government departments, cited as respondents in the case brought by CASA, opposed the application.
The first Chinese came to South Africa in the 1870s after gold was discovered. They remain one of the most politically marginalised and separate communities in South Africa today. Critics maintain that the community, which numbers several thousand, wanted to use a legal loophole to board the BEE bandwagon.
Suspicion of China has grown in the past decade as its influence on the continent has increased. Trade between Africa and China has risen to more than £20 billion since 2000. South Africa is China’s largest African trading partner. In 1990 bilateral trade was worth £750 million. Today it stands at more than £3 billion.
Many commentators fear it is a one-way relationship, in which China takes advantage of corrupt leaders to clinch deals that are not in the long-term interests of Africa. Others point to the willingness of China to sell arms and overlook human rights abuses.
The lawyers for Casa welcomed the court ruling, saying that for the first time in years Chinese South Africans had a firm legal status in society.
Chinese in South Africa
47 million Population of South Africa
20,000 Estimated number of people with Chinese origins
63,000 Chinese labourers who were sent to revive the South African gold mines in 1904
Sources: Colour, Confusion and Concessions: The History of the Chinese in South Africa by Melanie Yap and Dianne Leong Man