Investing in discourses of poverty and development: How white wealthy South Africans mobilise meaning to maintain privilege

Abstract

Twelve years after the transition from apartheid to democracy. South Africa remains a severely unequal society. On the one side of the divide are relatively prosperous white South Africans and an increasing black middle and upper class; and on the other side are harshly poor black South Africans. Despite decreasing interracial inequality, many white South Africans remain in a highly privileged position at the intersection of continued race and class systems of privilege. Research on whiteness in South Africa indicates that inequality is actively maintained by the discourses mobilised by white South Africans. This study was interested in furthering such research. A discourse analysis was applied to ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with white, wealthy South Africans, to identify the ways in which meaning was being constructed around issues of poverty and development. J.B. Thompson's (1984) framework was applied to these discourses, to identify whether they were operating ideologically (to maintain unequal relations of race and class domination). Findings indicate that participants were mobilising discourses that function to maintain a system of race and class privilege. These findings have implications for the future focus of development strategy in South Africa.