'Coloureds don't speak Chinese'
By: Lee Rondganger And SapaLabour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has sparked a firestorm with his remarks about South African Chinese.
Mdladlana said on Tuesday that as they had won a High Court ruling classifying them as coloured (sic), they had no excuse to mistreat workers or pretend to inspectors that they could not speak a South African language.
"They can speak Chinese, of course, in their homes; I have absolutely no difficulty with that. But when we visit them, they must also remember that they are now coloureds," he told a media briefing in Cape Town.
"What I know is that coloureds don't speak Chinese."
The chairperson of the Chinese Association of South Africa, Patrick Chong, said he was disappointed by the minister's comments.
"I don't think he has missed the point; I think he has missed the entire community. The community that went to court are as South African as the next person and speak English and Afrikaans fluently. We had to learn these languages. Also, the South African Chinese don't own many factories. I can think of only four, and they are in the Western Cape," he said.
Chong said he had not yet seen Mdladlana's exact comments but said that if Mdladlana was lumping Chinese South Africans with the recent wave of Chinese immigrants, then the minister did not understand who the ruling affected.
Last week's landmark ruling means that Chinese South Africans qualify for full benefits in terms of employment equity and black economic empowerment legislation.
"I hope that they would make sure that they implement and comply with the Labour Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act much, much better now that they have decided to classify themselves as coloureds as in the past," Mdladlana said on Tuesday.
"One would not expect a coloured person to ill-treat other coloureds, or black people to ill-treat blacks."
He said he believed the Chinese who brought the application were targeting the benefits of black economic empowerment.
"That's why other people are having fears, because the fear is that they are business entrepreneurs. I hear people saying 'we are going to be flooded by everything from China'.
"We don't know whether that's one of their objectives - that they flood us and then we don't challenge them because they are coloureds.
"On the labour market, I don't think they have given it careful thought, because there they are going to have some serious difficulties in relation to the way they are treating the workers in the workplaces.
"Because in some workplaces that we have visited together with some of the inspectors, they even refuse to speak English.
"They say they can't speak English. Chinese pretend to be dumb, when they are not.
"We know they are not. Chinese are very clever people.
"Therefore, if they are coloureds, they can't now say 'I can't speak the South African languages'..."
Chong said the minister's comments were very sad.
"Do you know that even immigrants from China who come here regard us as bananas? They say we are westernised on the inside and Chinese on the outside. Those of us who can speak Cantonese, speak a Cantonese they have not heard in 30 or 40 years.
"We are South African and we enjoy a good braai as much as the next person," he said.
Mdladlana said 90 percent of the Chinese factories inspected by his department had been "found wanting".
A factory owner from Botshabelo had moved his operation to Lesotho rather than comply with South African labour law. There was also the case of a Newcastle factory owner who locked his workers in at night, resulting in the death of the baby of a woman forced to give birth there.
He said he did not know whether the business people in those cases were South African nationals.
"To us it's irrelevant. An employer is an employer. Our job is to inspect whether you are complying."
However, the Inkatha Freedom Party had written to him, indicating that those people had been in South Africa for many years.
"One would assume out of that that they are more or less the same group... One would assume those are South African Chinese people. I put it in inverted commas because you are never sure. There are people with double citizenship."
Mdladlana added it had been a wise decision of the judge to merely say that the Chinese were coloureds, rather than try to create a special category for them in law, which would have led to complications.
"I suppose if I stand up now and say I want to be classified as pink, so maybe a court will agree that you are pink, even if you are not pink."