Inequality in South Africa

The articles in this special issue arise out of the inaugural inequality conference of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, in September 2018. Inequality is a universal problem, generating much focused scholarship and policy work across the globe, and countries in both the global North and the South are grappling with the social and economic fallout from sustained and growing levels of inequality. But the universality of the problem can obscure the fact that the causes of inequality may be very different around the world, and particularly in the post-colonial global South. There is, therefore, a need for detailed theoretical and empirical work that is rooted in the global South. The study and understanding of South Africa’s inequalities is different from that in other parts of the world. The country has a distinct history of racialised dispossession, and a labour market deeply divided by race and gender. Importantly, the post-apartheid state has attempted to redress the injustices and inequalities of the past through various programmes, policies and legislation.

Yet inequality remains one of South Africa’s most severe socio-economic challenges, and one which has persisted in the three decades of the post-apartheid era. It has the greatest inequality of income in the world (Sulla &Zikhali 2018), and extremely high inequality in wealth (Orthofer 2016). While economic inequality attracts consistent attention, there are many other socio-economic aspects of inequality that concern us, among them, market access, the linkages between macroeconomic policy and inequality, environmental inequality in the context of the climate crisis, and how South Africa’s economic and industrial structure entrenches inequality. Given the centrality of inequality in South Africa’s political economy, it is surprising then that, while we have an established history of poverty studies, inequality studies as an academic field remains somewhat in its infancy. While poverty is characterised by a lack, of basic needs, inequality is a relational phenomenon, at the centre of which is power (Soudien et al. 2019). The emergence of inequality studies has encouraged us to clarify our thinking on the relationship between poverty and inequality, and interrogate the important ways in which poverty and inequality are similar and different.

This special issue brings together papers focusing on two main areas. The first is on conceptual questions relating to inequality, including a philosophical examination of the entrenchment of capabilities inequality, the role of the constitution in addressing inequality, and how we depict and conceive of inequality. Using the capabilities framework, Chris Desmond examines the role of corrosive internalisation, and how the denial of responsibility supports the reproduction of inequality in South Africa. Cathi Albertyn asks if the South African Constitution constrains or empowers the government, courts and citizens to address systemic inequalities, foregrounding the role of politics and policy in the Constitutional regime. Steven Sack, Njabulo Chipangura and Patrick Bond argue that there is a need to identify means of illustrating inequality to a more general public than those concerned purely with public policy and research, and explore new ways to understand and represent inequality in South Africa.

The second section presents a rich collection of papers examining the ways in which inequality is produced and reproduced in contemporary South Africa. These papers present a truly multi-disciplinary approach to the study of inequality. The articles in this issue provide a compelling analysis of the different understandings of inequality and why it is continuing and intensifying despite years of democracy and government policy interventions in South Africa. In their article, Edward Webster and David Francis present some critical reflections on the nature and persistence of inequality in post-apartheid South Africa, framed in terms of a paradox of the persistence of high inequality against a progressive constitution which enshrines socio-economic rights. Patrick Bond and Chris Malikane survey the macroeconomic landscape in South Africa, highlighting the linkages between macroeconomics and inequality. Sumayya Goga, Teboho Bosiu and Jason Bell examine the important role that development finance can play in the structural transformation of the South Africa economy through a careful case study of the Industrial Development Corporation. Embedded within the structure of inequality in South Africa is entrenched inequality in wealth; Aroop Chatterjee presents a new approach to investigating and understanding wealth inequality in South Africa.

Moving beyond economic inequality, Jacklyn Cock and Victor Munnick examine the relationship between inequality, coal and a just transition to a fossil free world. Chris Callaghan, Natasha Callaghan and Rubina Jogee interrogate inequalities in healthcare research and development outcomes, and present a model of process disruption which engages the inequalities in research between the global North and South. Finally, Thandi Matthews and Jeff Handmaker analyse legal mobilisation’s potential to secure equal access to socioeconomic justice in South Africa.

The diverse articles in this issue provide a compelling analysis of the different understandings of inequality and why it is continuing and intensifying despite years of democracy and policy interventions in South Africa. It is our hope that the work presented here not only contributes to the development and growth of inequality studies in South Africa but also deepens the debate on how inequality can be reduced.