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In carrying out its constitutional mandate to protect, promote and monitor respect for human rights, the South African Human Rights Commission is required to receive and investigate complaints of alleged human rights violations. After investigating the complaints, the Commission has to make findings and recommendations. While the findings and recommendation are not legally binding and enforceable, they assist the Commission to identity issues of major human rights concern.

The Legal Services Department of the Commission has, to date, received numerous complaints concerning racism and racial discrimination. One such complaint is that received from Mr Hlomuka a Mathematics and Statistics lecturer regarding allegations of racism and racial discrimination in the Department of Physical Sciences at Technikon Northern Gauteng (TNG). Mr Hlomuka made various allegations, which include inter alia that, the Department constitute a staff that is racially imbalanced i.e. 6 white females and 3 black males and does not reflect the country's racial demographics. Secondly, that black lecturers have never been appointed to moderate a mathematics paper while their examination papers are moderated by white lecturers with less academic qualifications. Lastly, that white lecturers are afforded some privileges which range from unequal use of office telephones and prior access to examination papers. This practise enables white lecturers to guide their students in the preparation for examinations while the students taught by black lecturers are left in the lurch. He further alleged that the Technikon does not have proper structures in place to address his complaints of racism and racial discrimination and in instances where a structure has been set up, it has been either inappropriate or ill equipped to produce desired results.

The Commission considered the complaint and was satisfied that it constitutes a prima facie violation of the right to equality and non-discrimination of the ground of race. It conducted an investigation and produced a report of its findings and recommendations in line with the Constitution and the Human Rights Commission Act. The Commission found that some of Mr Hlomuka's allegations where unfounded and/or unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, the findings helped to highlight the status of race relations and the rate of transformation at TNG. On paper, it appears that black lecturers have senior academic qualifications than their white colleagues yet their examinations papers are moderated by whites with lesser qualifications. For instance, a white lecturer with a bachelor's degree has sometimes moderated a black lecturer with a Masters or PhD. The Commission also established that a black lecturer has never been appointed to moderate mathematics and found no justifiable reason of overlooking and/or excluding suitably qualified black lecturers.

It would appear that the provisions of the Constitution and the Employment Equity Act have not been fully considered when appointing moderators. The policy or practise of appointing moderators seems to ignore the constitutional principles of affirmative action, equality and non-discrimination. The Commission made some general observations and noted that the rate of transformation in the Physical Sciences Department and the Technikon seems to be moving very slow. During the course of the investigation, it discovered that in 1997 the Technikon adopted an affirmative action policy, but that policy has not yet been implemented. It was also noted that some practises are perpetuated merely because that is the way things were done for so many years and thereby overlooking issues of transformation.

The Commission believes that there is a need in the present state of the development of democracy to guard against implementing policies and procedures which are discriminatory in their purpose or effect, as that dampens the spirit and purport of the Constitution.

Contact: Phumla Mthala at (011) 484-8300/ 0832883339

Issued by: South African Human Rights Commission, 23 July 2001