Embracing the appointment of black people "because it's the right thing to do" harkens back to the Liberal discourse; the instrumental embracing of the appointment of black people to attain diversity harkens to the Neoliberal discourse.
In the context of this "debate" at UCT, the Liberal position - argued by David Benatar in the original Great Debate - has been cast as conservative, reactionary, even racist (through denying the validity of "race" as a continued meaningful construct); the Neoliberal position - argued by Martin Hall in that encounter - has been cast as progressive, revolutionary, anti-racist (through the reframing of the concept of "race").
Now, as fellow survivors of undergraduate Philosophy will know, there is nothing inherently contradictory about the concepts of liberalism and conservatism; or of neoliberalism and progressivism - it all depends on what one wishes to conserve, and whither one wishes to transform. A Liberal would indeed be conservative when faced with the threat to values s/he held dear: values not unlike those on our own Statement of Values. A Neoliberal, similarly, would harness massive progressive energy in pursuit of a transformation towards a marketised environment. Which position is to the Left, and which to the Right, of each other, relatively speaking?
Of course, in the South African context, we have multiple dimensions overlaying each other, and a purely class analysis, just like a purely "race"-based analysis, or a purely any single facet-based analysis, is bound to be simplistic and lacking the nuance to describe our situation most appropriately - hence the horror of those who still value intellectual rigour at the careless bandying about of inappropriate and lazy terms to dismiss the argument of the Other Side.
Henri's point is a useful one to focus our minds on why it is we're doing what we're doing, and what we hope to achieve as a result of that.