Government failure as an explanation for the asymmetric effects of labour apartheid in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract The origins, nature and effects of ideological apartheid in post-1948 South Africa has attracted a vast research effort from scholars in a wide range of different disciplines. A good deal of their work has focussed on the economic underpinnings of apartheid in general, and the impact of racially discriminatory labour legislation in particular. But the sheer complexity of apartheid labour regulation has left many interesting questions unanswered.2 One such question hinges on the asymmetric incidence of labour apartheid on public and private sector employment patterns in South Africa. To date attempts to explain this empirically well-established phenomenon have relied on assumptions which simply assert the more rigorous application of discriminatory legislation in the public sector.3 The present paper seeks to explain a greater incidence of labour apartheid in the South African public sector by employing a theory of non-market failure.