Abstract:
This article traces the history and dilemma of the South African born Chinese (SABCs,
also known as the indigenous Chinese) in terms of their legal dispensation. Within
months of the implementation of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment
Act 35 of 2003, it became apparent that the Chinese communities were excluded
as beneficiaries of the legislation as well as from the Employment Equity Act 55 of
1998. This situation was in line with the treatment that the Chinese had received
since they first arrived in the Cape Colony towards the end of the seventeenth
century, and was perpetuated throughout the subsequent centuries to beyond the
1994 new political dispensation. The exclusion of the Chinese from Broad-Based
Black Economic Empowerment and Employment Equity and their legal action
challenging the Acts, took place against the backdrop of stereotypical representation
in popular consciousness and ignorance of a people who have been part of the
South African past for three centuries. This article places the South African Chinese
legal battle of the twenty-first century within the context of their perpetual invidious
position in South Africa’s past. It traces the neglected and checkered legal history of
a marginalised minority.
