Indians benefited under apartheid in SAfrica: analysts

Two analysts in South Africa have claimed that as Indians were benefitted under apartheid they should not be included in government's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) schemes.
Both analysts were commenting on findings that the Indian population had seen the fastest growth in per capita income in recent years, as shown in a report by Standard Bank this week.
Economist Professor Bonke Dumisa had claimed that Indian South Africans were prosperous due to "being less oppressed during apartheid", while another economist, Dawie Roodt, was reported as saying that "there were no grounds for Indians to remain beneficiaries of black economic empowerment policies".

Both of them were commenting on a research report commissioned by Standard Bank, but the bank's economists Goolam Ballim and Siphamandla Mkhwanazi, said their comments were "misrepresentations by third parties" of its report that was meant to assess how incomes of South Africans have changed in the recent past using mostly publicly available information.
Standard Bank, however, distanced itself from claims by the two analysts.
"At no point does the report refer or analyse income pre-1994 (apartheid-era), and as such no comparisons were made between apartheid and post-apartheid income distribution," the bank representatives said in a statement.

The bank officials listed in detail the practical discriminatory practices imposed on the Indian community from the time that Mahatma Gandhi led resistance to them at the turn of the last century during his tenure here.

The statement that Indians "benefited" from apartheid is (therefore) in defiance of history and conscience. Indeed, it is defiance of the very principles of exclusion that Mahatma Gandhi railed against following his arrival in the country in 1893.
"Gandhi, like all Indians at the time, was forced to carry a pass, and in 1896 was witness to legislation in which Indian voting rights in what was then Natal were restricted,".
Standard Bank said its study had proven that the Indian community has benefited from freedom since 1994, when Nelson Mandela led the first democratically-elected government; and not from apartheid.
"This is a source of inspiration, rather than a moment for regress and discrimination," the bank added.

The call by the economists to exclude Indians from BEE
schemes was dismissed by many leading Indian-origin South Africans.
Veteran political activists Swaminathan Gounden and Kay Moonsamy conceded that Indians might have been lesser impacted than Africans by apartheid practices, but not enough to justify their exclusion from BEE projects.
Businessman Mickey Chetty, who is also the president of the multi-national International Movement for Tamil Culture, strongly rejected the economists' views.
"It is disgusting to think that we as Indians were given handouts. We worked hard for what we have and got where we are today because of consistent efforts to better our lives and those of our children, despite the apartheid-era restrictions," Chetty said.

Neeshan Balton of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, which aims at promoting non-racialism, said that while the Standard Bank report highlighted the increasing levels of inequality and poverty in South Africa, the interpretation to exclude Indians for empowerment was "ill considered".