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=Affirmative Action in Namibia=

What is Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action in Namibia refers to policies that take factors (including race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group in areas of employment,education, politics and businesses, usually justified as countering the effects of a history of discrimination. It’s succinctly defined in the Affirmative Action Employment Act as a set of measures designed to ensure that persons in designated groups enjoy equal employment opportunities at all levels of employment and are equitably represented in the workforce of a relevant employer.

Origins of Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action came from the United States of America. It was discovered by the first president John F. Kennedy. He suggested a provision that government contractors take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. The intent of this executive order was to affirm the government's commitment to equal opportunity for all qualified persons, and to take positive action to strengthen efforts to realize true equal opportunity for all.

Programmes

 * Programmes to raise the socio-economic level of groups subjected to long-standing patterns of discrimination.
 * programmes should help to redress generations of lost opportunities for such groups. But quite apart from moral considerations, on a purely pragmatic level, affirmative action, through its methodical investment in under-utilized human resource potential, makes excellent business sense.
 * Programmes help to unlock the latent capacity of enterprises which have here to fore been restricted through prejudicial policies and practices, whether intentional or not.
 * Affirmative action measures are stated as including: elimination of barriers, efforts to accommodate persons with disabilities, furthering employment opportunities through training programmers,  and giving preferential treatment in employment decisions to suitably qualified persons from designated groups.

It would be useful to briefly consider the origin of the concept and thus obtain a better perspective of its nature and purpose. Objective performance standards need to be lowered, people should be appointed to jobs which they are in capable of performing satisfactorily, employees can arbitrarily be fired at will in order to make place for others, all employers must follow identical and rigid programmes of advancement, and that such policies and programmes will necessarily have to be kept in place indefinitely. It goes without saying, that the implementation of affirmative action measures restricts the opportunities of some persons.The challenges of affirmative action in Namibia are compounded by the lack of resources and societal structural impediments. The restriction of opportunities is a consequence of the removal of a privilege hitherto enjoyed by those who benefited from the previous status quo. Affirmative action measures are temporary in nature designed to dismantle employment inequities - and not to exclude any persons, simply because they belong to a certain group - they cannot correctly be deemed unjust. Affirmative action does not stem from prejudice against a particular societal group, nor is it intended to stigmatize its members. All Namibians should be treated equally regardless of colour, race, and gender.