Everyone Wants to be Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe, a basket case of a country, an absolute disaster, is for some African countries (and for some in western countries as well), the shining city on the hill. Take Namibia.

All Africa reports,

Since last year, companies employing 25 and more people must submit their affirmative action reports.

Previously the threshold was at 50 employees.

The AA reports indicate the number and percentage of previously racially advantaged and disadvantaged people employed, also at top management and executive level, and should reflect changes in favour of previously disadvantaged Namibians.

The EEC reviewed 514 reports covering 138 386 employees, representing an increase of 23 per cent, according to Employment Equity Commissioner Vilbard Usiku.

However, 123 employers failed to submit their reports, which is against the law and they were charged.

The EEC further found that 24 Government ministries and agencies have transgressed and they are being investigated.

[...]

According to Commissioner Usiku, supervisory employment levels had been skewed with regard to the representation of whites and previously disadvantaged Namibians [at Independence].

“The situation is still far from perfect the white employees proportionally enjoyed more than their fair share of representation at executive and management levels during the review period,” Usiku stated.

“The EEC will not relax its guard and will continue to guide unco-operative employers with a firm hand through rigorous enforcement of the provisions of the Affirmative Action law until satisfactory progress has been achieved.”

They want to be Zimbabwe. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? How could I say such a thing?

Because they said it. They actually said it. And they are doing it.

Back in 2006, Mail & Guardian reported,

Namibia’s justice minister has praised Zimbabwe’s controversial programme of farm seizures, saying newspapers that run negative stories about the country are taken over by forces opposed to the success of Africanism, it was reported on Wednesday.

Speaking during a tour of three Zimbabwe farms allocated to black farmers, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana said there was too much propaganda against the country, the government’s Herald newspaper reported.

“When I came to Zimbabwe I was looking for chaos, disorder, lawlessness and rampant human rights abuse. I was surprised to see people working, some of them on their farms,” the minister said.

It is a real paradise in Zimbabwe. If starvation is your definition of paradise.

Namibia has recently embarked on its own programme of land reforms, and says it sees Zimbabwe as a role model for the way land reform can be carried out.

Roger Clegg writes in the National Review,

There’s a review today on Salon of a “Raunchy gay fantasia from Tel Aviv,” part of the “the explosion of new movies from Israel [that] has included a distinctly gay mini-wave.” [...]

Buried in the discussion of this movie, which features mostly “a roomful of good-looking guys,” is this sentence: “You can throw in Omer’s lesbian sister Shirley (Shirli Salomon) and her rocky affair with her lesbian-coffeeshop boss, but they’re just affirmative-action window dressing.” So my point is that, in 2008, even on hip movie reviews for Salon, everyone knows that Affirmative Action equals Not Actually Qualified.

And this is just the latest and most amusing example of that point. To call something “affirmative action” or, especially, to call someone an example of “affirmative action” is to acknowledge that the standards have been lowered. It’s an interesting phenomenon — that it’s politically incorrect to point this out in a direct discussion of the issue, but perfectly okay to incorporate the observation obliquely, in a discussion of something else.