ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates affirmative action outcomes in South Africa. Blacks have increasingly attained higher education. However, institutions remain stratified in quality and reputation, and black, especially African, participation in certain fields remains considerably lagging. Class-based privilege extends from schooling and family background into higher education; leading institutions are more racially diverse but less accessible to disadvantaged students. Universities have sought to incorporate socio-economic disadvantage into admissions processes. Employment equity law has impelled increased black representation in high-level occupations, particularly in the government departments and state-owned entities, but progress is constrained by shortfalls of skilled workers and of employers’ investment in affirmative action. Partisan appointments that have arguably compromised public service delivery, and perceived hierarchies in preference within the black population, are sources of discontent. For enterprise development, state-owned entities and large corporations have contributed to black presence in decision-making roles, but transformation at the apex moves slowly. Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE), leveraging on public procurement and the BBBEE scorecard, has accumulated a chequered progress record, falling short particularly in cultivating new black-owned entities, which has spurred recent, more direct interventions to promote black industrialists. The current affirmative action regime is formally institutionalized and practically embedded, but significantly fluid and decentralized, while also under scrutiny to broadly and effectively deliver benefits and to recover eroded public trust.
