I would like to add my views on affirmative action. Whites have never supported affirmative action.

I would like to add my views on affirmative action. Whites have never supported affirmative action.

Their response is largely an insidious effort to re-establish white hegemony.

Affirmative action policies and employment equity were introduced by the democratic government to redress the socioeconomic imbalances and political domination created by apartheid and colonialism.

In my view, the public sector which government exercises control over has to be commended for the rate at which it has implemented these equity policies. Curiously, it is in the private sector where white males exercise excessive control that very little has been done to implement affirmative action policies. In fact, they have been resisted.

It is not surprising that the private sector has met equity policies with covert resistance. From the word go, the majority of white people in this country never supported affirmative action. I agree with the views of the chairman of Employment Equity Commission, Jimmy Manyi, that there is "under-utilisation of skills and unconscious or sophisticated racism".

This reactionary onslaught against affirmative action policies denies the achievement of true social and economic justice in the democratic South Africa - and attaches credence to my view that the majority of whites have never supported affirmative action.

Oupa Mhlongo, Johannesburg