Inequality in post-apartheid South Africa

Negotiations to end

political power.^[1] Repercussions from the decades of apartheid continue to resonate through every facet of South African life, despite copious amounts of legislation meant to alleviate inequalities.^[3]

Post-apartheid South Africa struggles to correct the

socioeconomic stratification by race.^[5] A small subset of the Black population have been able to create a Black middle class that did not exist during apartheid, but otherwise, the large majority of Black people in South Africa have yet to experience a difference in economic class since apartheid was abolished.^[3]^[4] International measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, report that inequalities within races has greatly increased since the end of apartheid, even when overall inequalities are slightly improved.^[3]^[5] High levels of Black unemployment coupled with a rising Black population remains one of the biggest problems, particularly for women and the uneducated or unskilled.^[5]^[6]

South Africa's most recent

poverty line, preventing accurate measures from being assessed.^[4]^[5] The most recent census did not include measures of income previously used to define poverty in prior censuses nor did it give an official population percentage, but international organizations have placed the percentage of South African people experiencing poverty to at least 50% and possibly even higher after the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.^[4]^[5]^[6]

Factors contributing to post-apartheid inequality in South Africa

Key legislation shaping post-apartheid inequality

South Africa has extremely high

socio-economic programme aimed at addressing racial inequalities by creating business and education while only 4% of the wealthiest students are functionally illiterate, indicating a stark divide in literacy between income quartiles.^[9]

Educational disparities

The spatial

segregation of apartheid continues to affect educational opportunities. Black and low-income students face geographic barriers to good schools, which are usually located in affluent neighborhoods.^[9] While South Africans enter higher education

in increasing numbers, there is still a stark difference in the racial distribution of these students.

As of 2013, the global competitiveness survey [10] ranked South Africa last out of 148 for the quality of maths and science education and 146th out of 148 for the quality of general education, behind almost all African countries despite one of the largest budgets for education on the African continent. The same report lists the biggest obstacle to doing business as an "Inadequately educated workforce". Education, therefore, remains one of the poorest areas of performance in post-apartheid South Africa and one of the biggest causes of continued inequality and poverty.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic

The

Western countries, implementing a 6-week lock down only 22 days after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported in South Africa early in March.^[12]^[4] Restrictions included a ban on international travelers, school closures, and the prohibition of large group gatherings including 100 people or more.^[11] School closures threatened food security for 9 million children who relied on school feeding programs to supplement daily nutrition with no back-up plan given by the government.^[13] Two weeks into the lock down further rules were implemented, including the closure of non-essential businesses and a controversial sales ban on liquor, tobacco, and vaping products.^[11] Close to 10 million low-income individuals lost their jobs during this time.^[13]

As the 6-week lock down came to an end, South Africa began to reduce the severity of lock down rules, citing successful containment, but the South African government was criticized for inflating positive results of early containment procedures without evidence to support their claims.[12] Hospitals already lacked the resources to handle their pre-COVID case loads and were quickly overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases early on in the pandemic, necessitating other health problems to be sidelined.^[11] Domestic violence cases against women and children in the lower economic classes skyrocketed.^[13] An emergency food box program was eventually created to fight food insecurity, but most poor communities never received the help.^[4] Less than 100,000 of the boxes were distributed across South Africa in the first year and a half of the program’s creation.^[13] Economically disadvantaged communities found immense fault with the inequitable government efforts regarding food allocation, testing centers, and the distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE).^[11] Brewing public frustration over economic losses, lock down measures, the lack of available medical interventions, and the arrest of former South African president Jacob Zuma resulted in widely attended protests that devolved into destructive riots in KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg in 2021.^[4] The events now known as the 2021 South African unrest, the Zuma riots, or the July 2021 riots, escalated into the most severe violence South Africa has witnessed since the conclusion of apartheid, and resulted in the arrests of over 5,500 individuals and the deaths of 354.^[11]

Wealth inequality

According to the World Bank, South Africa is the most economically unequal country in the world. The difference between the wealthy and the poor in South Africa has been increasing steadily since the end of apartheid in 1994, and this inequality is closely linked to racial divisions in society.