African Cardinal: Affirmative Action Is ‘Racial Discrimination’ Like Apartheid 7 Mar 2021 South African Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier slammed preferential “Black Economic Empowerment” as “racial discrimination” Sunday, saying such favoritism smacks of apartheid. Cardinal Napier, the archbishop of Durban, wrote on Twitter that Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment and even Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment are all forms of racial discrimination “on a par with apartheid policies” that also favored another group by race. The cardinal put his assertion in the form of a “Lenten Resolution”: to give up on trying to figure out how preferential treatment for blacks based on skin color can be anything other than discrimination.