Bee-ing Chinese in South Africa : a legal historic perspective

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.