Inequality In South Africa Research Articles

From Plinth to Stage: Protest Theater as Historiographic Activism in The Fall

AbstractThis essay examines theater's role in recording public history, positing a performance-sensitive approach to historiography against the singularity of both monuments and canons. The recent removal of monuments has drawn renewed attention to the problem of singular public histories. I argue for a polyvocal, repertory model of public history as theorized through the collectively written 2016 play The Fall, which records the events of the 2015–16 student protests in South Africa. The essay begins by contextualizing the play in the longer history of workshop theater and educational inequality in South Africa before specifically examining its approach to public history. Such performance-sensitive historiography enacts anticolonial epistemologies by replacing the singular representation of monumentalism with copresence amid contested histories.

Notes on Contributors

Duncan Brown is Professor of English in the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape. He has published widely in the field of South African literary and cultural studies. His recent books include Wilder Lives: Humans and Our Environments (2019), and Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature (2020). He is Principal Investigator on the Andrew W. Mellon funded project on “Rethinking South African Literature(s)” (2019-2024), and Co-ordinator on the South African section of the University of Oslo funded project on “Global Trout: Investigating Environmental Change through More-than-Human World Systems” (2019-2024). Michael Chapman is a researcher-in-residence at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa. His creative nonfictional work Green in Black-and-White Times appeared in 2016. On Literary Attachment in South Africa: Tough Love (2022) seeks to embody in a single language of response two categories that are usually thought to be apart, criticism (conceptual) and art (creative). Andries du Toit is the director of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, where he has spent most of the last thirteen years answering emails and navigating the university's labyrinthine procurement and HR system. In his spare time he does research, focusing on the politics of landlessness, poverty, and inequality in South Africa.

Impact of Migration on Non-Migrant School Completion Rates and Enrolment in South Africa

South Africa struggles with low secondary school completion rates and this has a negative effect on poverty and inequality. In this study, we examine the relationship between internal migration (international migrants were excluded) and non-migrant educational outcomes (secondary school enrolment and completion rates) in South Africa between 1996 and 2011. We use census data for the years 1996, 2001 and 2011 (at the district and municipal levels) in several linear probability regression models that include the First Difference (FD) and System Generalised Method of Moments (GMM-SYS) with instrumental variables. The 2011 census is the latest available in South Africa now. We find that internal migrants have a positive effect on both enrolment and completion rates of non-migrants. These results vary in intensity depending on the level of education of both internal migrant and non-migrant household heads. These results have implications for the local labour market and for income inequality in South Africa; internal migrants provide positive peer effects that contribute to raising non-migration enrolment and completion. Internal migrants also provide job market competition which influences non-migrants to complete secondary schooling. There is scant empirical evidence on the impact of internal migration on education outcomes in African countries, especially in South Africa. Our paper provides evidence from a country with a history of persistent internal migration. Most prior research has focused on the relationship between immigration and education outcomes in the developed world. We recommend that government improves secondary school quality in rural and urban areas and increase study loans for students at tertiary institutions.

Racial inequality and the imperative critique of the South African negotiated settlement

The former South African first black President’s vision aimed to unite and fight racial tensions and inequalities by introducing and envisioning a South Africa for all who live in it. However, twenty-five years later, the post-apartheid South Africa is riddled with cancerous ills such as racial inequality, racism, and failure to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. This paper will attest to the notion that the 1994 rainbow nation ideology is dead because racial inequality is still a norm, and that the implication of the negotiated settlement has preserved racial inequality and its core racist foundations. The ideology of the “rainbow nation” has failed to erode racial inequality in South Africa. It has failed to close the gap between the poor and the rich and most importantly, the “rainbow nation” ideology has shown that it was a one-sided concord dependent on whose privilege matters most and not a collective view to addressing racial inequality. Black South Africans have, therefore, continued to bear the brunt of poverty, unemployment and inequality compared to white South fricans. I argue that the “rainbow nation” has failed to address racial inequality and build the imperative ideology of sameness and togetherness. I will employ a standard method of applied analytical philosophy to perform this task, which is grounded in critical conceptual analysis and systematic rational argumentation.

Drivers of socioeconomic inequalities of child hunger during COVID-19 in South Africa: evidence from NIDS-CRAM Waves 1–5

BackgroundChild hunger has long-term and short-term consequences, as starving children are at risk of many forms of malnutrition, including wasting, stunting, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies. The purpose of this paper is to show that the child hunger and socio-economic inequality in South Africa increased during her COVID-19 pandemic due to various lockdown regulations that have affected the economic status of the population.MethodsThis paper uses the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM WAVES 1–5) collected in South Africa during the intense COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 to assess the socioeconomic impacts of child hunger rated inequalities. First, child hunger was determined by a composite index calculated by the authors. Descriptive statistics were then shown for the investigated variables in a multiple logistic regression model to identify significant risk factors of child hunger. Additionally, the decomposable Erreygers' concentration index was used to measure socioeconomic inequalities on child hunger in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic.ResultsThe overall burden of child hunger rates varied among the five waves (1–5). With proportions of adult respondents indicated that a child had gone hungry in the past 7 days: wave 1 (19.00%), wave 2 (13.76%), wave 3 (18.60%), wave 4 (15, 68%), wave 5 (15.30%). Child hunger burden was highest in the first wave and lowest in the second wave. The hunger burden was highest among children living in urban areas than among children living in rural areas. Access to electricity, access to water, respondent education, respondent gender, household size, and respondent age were significant determinants of adult reported child hunger. All the concentrated indices of the adult reported child hunger across households were negative in waves 1–5, suggesting that children from poor households were hungry. The intensity of the pro-poor inequalities also increased during the study period. To better understand what drove socioeconomic inequalites, in this study we analyzed the decomposed Erreygers Normalized Concentration Indices (ENCI). Across all five waves, results showed that race, socioeconomic status and type of housing were important factors in determining the burden of hunger among children in South Africa.ConclusionThis study described the burden of adult reported child hunger and associated socioeconomic inequalities during the Covid-19 pandemic. The increasing prevalence of adult reported child hunger, especially among urban children, and the observed poverty inequality necessitate multisectoral pandemic shock interventions now and in the future, especially for urban households.

UNPACKING THE ENIGMA OF DEMOCRACY, INTERGENERATIONAL INEQUALITY AND POVERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA

This paper examines the role of democracy on poverty and intergenerational inequality in South Africa. The authors used secondary data and published literature to unpack the nexus of the problem, and to further broaden understanding of democracy, intergenerational inequality, and poverty in South Africa. The authors establish that unemployment, lack of property ownership and a poor educational system are the main contributors to poverty and intergenerational inequality in South Africa. However, we found that the government’s propoor policies have not adequately addressed the problems. As recommendations, this paper submits that it is essential to increase the redistribution of assets, especially land, to allow land ownership by the poor, which will open many other economic opportunities, such as access to capital. Also, government policies need to be revisited for quality job creation, closing the unemployment gap in the market.

Monetary Policy and Inequality Links: Should Central Banks be Concerned?

In this article, the link between monetary policy and inequality is investigated using the vector auto regression based impulse response functions. The study was motivated by persistent high income inequality in South Africa and the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the debate on the links between monetary policy and inequality. South African annual time series data from 1990 to 2021 was used to examine the relationship between monetary policy and inequality. The impulse response functions show that the overall income distribution is briefly improved following a monetary policy shock. The findings suggest a fluctuating effect of monetary policy on inequality of which after period six a shock to monetary policy has no effect to inequality since the relationship reaches a stable state. The policy implication is the countercyclical use of monetary policy to reduce inequality is only effective in the early phases and in the long term the effect of monetary policy on inequality is reduced. The policy suggestion is that monetary policy alone cannot tackle inequality in an economy with other structural challenges that are outside of the monetary system. Hence policy coordination between monetary policy and fiscal policy is essential.

Identifying the Wage Differential in the Temporary Employment Services Sector: Evidence for South Africa using Administrative Tax Records

Although the temporary employment services (TES) or labour broker sector has been growing in recent decades, and there has been much heated public debate on whether the jobs offered constitute ‘decent work’, there has been little empirical research on this sector in developing countries. In this paper, we use a unique administrative panel dataset based on income tax records for the period 2011–2015 in South Africa, to explore the wage and benefits differentials between TES and non-TES workers. We find a substantial gross wage differential of around 88 per cent, which remains high at 34 per cent even after accounting for worker fixed effects and controlling for the individual and job characteristics available in the data. We also show that TES workers are much less likely to report benefit contributions than non-TES workers, and when they do, their contributions as a percentage of the gross wage are on average much lower than among non-TES workers. These results add substance to the arguments that TES workers are in a more precarious position than non-TES workers, and that this form of employment contributes to high levels of labour market inequality in South Africa.

Equivalence scales in a developing country with extensive inequality

AbstractThis study estimates food budget share equations to calculate household equivalence scales that incorporate base‐independence and address potential endogeneity, even though an instrument that satisfies the usual exclusion restriction may not be available. The application incorporates semi‐parametric methods, control functions and heteroscedasticity instrumentation, allowing for heterogeneity in household preferences. The application is founded on the most recent income and expenditure data that are available for South Africa. We find that there is extensive heterogeneity and that endogeneity matters. Failing to account for endogeneity leads to overstated equivalence scales in nearly every circumstance. When we fit our calculated scales to a typical equivalence structure via non‐linear least squares, we find values of near unity and values of mostly below 0.5. Thus, our analysis suggests that a square‐root scale is more appropriate than other scales that have been used to examine poverty and inequality in South Africa.

Comparative Lessons in Sectional Title Laws: Mitigating Urban Inequality in South Africa.

Urban inequality in South Africa is a formidable problem that is linked to the injustices of its historical apartheid past. This paper identifies sectional titles, a form of property ownership where proprietors wholly own their apartment unit while co-owning the land and common property, as critical to providing more affordable housing. Sectional title schemes mitigate urban inequality by giving a greater proportion of the country the opportunity to own legally secure, well-located dwellings while serving as a platform where communal living could take place. Two suggestions how sectional title legislation can further alleviate aspects of urban inequality are made (1) Permitting a supermajority of sectional owners to terminate a sectional scheme prevents holdout and allows urban land to be redeveloped, providing an increase in housing. (2) Municipalities could consider mandating ethnic integration in sectional schemes to counter the organic formation of mono-racial residential enclaves which remain in present-day South Africa.

Wealth Inequality in South Africa—The Role of Government Policy

In South Africa, high levels of wealth inequality have persisted since 1994, to the extent that 1% of the population owns 50% of the wealth. This study examines how macroeconomic policies influenced wealth inequality in South Africa over the period 2010 to 2019 using a behavioural life-cycle model. Despite a decrease in wealth inequality over this period, the extent of this decrease is almost negligible. Results show government’s current policy model to redirect wealth from a very small tax base that is under increasing financial strain is unable to meet wealth redistributive targets. The South African government should change the wealth redistribution policy from redistribution through predominantly lump sums to creating an environment in which private enterprises are able to absorb the labour capital that South Africa possesses. An open labour market would support private and foreign direct investment into the economy, thereby strengthening economic growth and upliftment through increased income and the consequent ability to accumulate wealth.

Education and training experiences of early childhood care and education practitioners in rural and urban settings of Durban, South Africa

Background: The education and training experiences of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) practitioners reflect gaps and inequalities in South Africa’s educational system. Most South African ECCE centre practitioners do not have the appropriate qualifications to provide quality education to young learners.Aim: The study aimed to explore how the education and training experiences of ECCE practitioners impact their professional identity in urban and rural settings in KwaZulu-Natal province and to develop a model that would enhance the education and training of ECCE practitioners.Setting: Ten participants were selected for this study: one centre head and four practitioners from a rural setting, and one centre head and four practitioners from an urban area.Methods: Wenger’s social theory of learning was used to obtain an in-depth understanding of ECCE practitioners’ education and training experiences and how they function as professional workers. An interpretative, qualitative case study was adopted. Data was collected through focus group semi-structured interviews and non-participants’ observation and then analysed thematically.Results: The findings revealed that practitioners in rural settings had to contend with unfair working conditions daily, working all day in challenging circumstances whilst earning low incomes. Urban practitioners worked reasonable hours and received living wages, although they also experienced challenges such as a lack of parental involvement, lack of transport for children and high rates of absenteeism.Conclusion: Inequalities between rural and urban practitioners existed concerning resources, salaries, working conditions and further study and professional growth opportunities. Ensuring that practitioners attain proper Early Childhood Care (ECC) qualifications will raise the profession’s esteem amongst wider communities.

Climate change, labour availability and the future of gender inequality in South Africa

ABSTRACT Women in developing countries are more exposed to the adverse effects of climate change. We develop a structural model to study the long-term impacts of climate and socioeconomic changes on labour supply and the pay gap between male/female and high-skilled/low-skilled labour. We calibrate our model with empirical evidence on the impacts of increasing temperatures on labour availability in two general economic sectors with high and low exposure to rising temperatures. Using five waves of nationally representative micro-survey data in South Africa from 2008 to 2017, we find that while high-skilled labour availability is insensitive to climate change, higher temperatures have a negative impact on working hours of low-skilled labour specially among women in the high-exposure sector. We incorporate these findings in an overlapping generations (OLG) model to show that climate-induced reduction in labour availability increases the relative wages of low-skilled female labour and reduces the wage gap between male and female labour in the high-exposure sector, and between high-skilled and low-skilled female labour, in general. Considering climate change damages both on sectoral productivity and on labour availability, we project that by the end of the century, the output per adult will drop by about 11 percentage points under a severe climate scenario. This calls for more targeted adaptation policies that build on the potential benefits of climate change in reducing gender inequality and empowering women to take up more active roles in designing and implementing such policies at the local level.

Monetary policy and wage inequality in South Africa

The distributive consequences of monetary policy have been researched only recently and almost entirely in advanced economies. This paper sheds light on the effect of conventional monetary policy shocks on the wage distribution in South Africa, where inequality – mostly driven by the segmented labour market – remains a large issue. Impulse response functions estimated from local projections show that the wage distribution significantly worsens in response to monetary shocks. Wages in the top half of the distribution, that benefit from unanticipated expansions, are less responsive to surprise contractions, remaining protected by skill-biased technology and strong labour unions.

Infrastructure inequality is a characteristic of urbanization

Urbanization can challenge sustainable development if it produces unequal outcomes. Infrastructure is an important urbanization dimension, providing services to support diverse urban activities. However, it can lock in unequal outcomes due to its durable nature. This paper studies inequalities in infrastructure distributions to derive insights into the structure and characteristics of unequal outcomes associated with urbanization. We analyzed infrastructure inequalities in two emerging economies in the Global South: India and South Africa. We developed and applied an inequality measure to understand the structure of inequality in infrastructure provisioning (based on census data) and infrastructure availability (based on satellite nighttime lights [NTLs] data). Consistent with differences in economic inequality, results show greater inequalities in South Africa than in India and greater urban inequalities than rural inequalities. Nevertheless, inequalities in urban infrastructure provisioning and infrastructure availability increase from finer to coarser spatial scales. NTL-based inequality measurements additionally show that inequalities are more concentrated at coarse spatial scales in India than in South Africa. Finally, results show that urban inequalities in infrastructure provisioning covary with urbanization levels conceptualized as a multidimensional phenomenon, including demographic, economic, and infrastructural dimensions. Similarly, inequalities in urban infrastructure availability increase monotonically with infrastructure development levels and urban population size. Together, these findings underscore infrastructure inequalities as a feature of urbanization and suggest that understanding urban inequalities requires applying an inequality lens to urbanization.

Motivations and barriers for young scientists to engage with society: perspectives from South Africa

ABSTRACT Our qualitative interviews with 16 early-career South African researchers investigated how they view public engagement and its role in their research careers, as well as the motivations, challenges and institutional factors that shape their engagement efforts. We situate our findings in the context of high societal diversity and inequality in South Africa. We found that young researchers see public engagement predominantly as a tool to educate the public, with limited awareness of dialogic and participative approaches. While the researchers saw benefit in participating in public engagement, they disagreed on whether public engagement is an integral part of a scientist’s professional role. Personal enjoyment was a key motivator for engagement, but they also wanted to make a difference in their communities by helping to address knowledge gaps. Time constraints, competing work demands and a perceived lack of skills were barriers, as well as a shortage of institutional support and engagement opportunities. The young researchers were eager to have access to engagement training and felt that public engagement deserves more recognition in their work environments. Based on this, we proposed recommendations for institutions that may help to create a supportive environment for early-career scientists who wish to participate in public engagement.

The neoliberal influence on South Africa’s early democracy and its shortfalls in addressing economic inequality

In this article, I will argue that early post-Apartheid South Africa adopted certain neoliberal principles which compromised the efforts to combat economic inequality. In particular, I will show that the economic policies that South Africa adopted during its early democracy reflect core neoliberal principles which promote a neoliberal political rationality. These economic policies indicate a pivotal approach from the African National Congress government in addressing economic inequality in South Africa. The dramatic shift from traditional Marxist policies to neoliberal policies reveals the significant influence of a neoliberal global market system during South Africa’s early democracy. However, the neoliberal policies failed to address the problem of economic inequality in South Africa. Instead, these policies seem to have deepened the existing economic inequality in contemporary South African society.

Does Socioeconomic status mediate the relationship between income loss and depression scores? Evidence from South Africa.

This paper examines the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in mediating the effect of job and household income loss on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We note that even though job loss will invariably reduce household income, the relationship between these factors and mental health may be mediated by SES. Specifically, in the context of COVID-19 induced shock, job loss may not be a threat to survival for an individual with relatively high SES, while this is not the case for individuals with low SES. Our empirical analysis uses threshold regression under the assumption that the relationship between depressive symptoms and pandemic induced job/ income loss has a threshold effect. We find that job loss (but not the decline in household income) is a stronger predictor of poor mental health for individuals that live in households above a certain SES threshold. This suggests that the psychological trauma of job loss due to loss of identity and purpose outweighs the financial loss for individuals with higher SES. On the other hand, a decrease in household income (as against the loss of individual income) is a stronger predictor of poor mental health for individuals with lower SES. We argue that these findings are related to high-income inequality in South Africa. The results highlight the different implications of job loss and income loss for depressive symptoms in the context of high socioeconomic inequality.

Unequal Remunerations in the South African Private Sector

Abstract South Africa has passed various laws such as the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 to address discriminatory practices in the workplace. These discriminatory practices include the unequal pay between males and females performing work of equal value. Payment of unequal remunerations is prevalent in the South African private sector, and it is exacerbated by the preferential treatment enjoyed by white employees compared to employees in other race groups. White groups and black males dominate higher positions in the private sector and their remunerations are often higher than those of black female employees in similar positions. This is so because the private sector engages in the gender wage gap to the detriment of suitably black South African females who are both underrepresented at managerial levels and paid less than their male counterparts. This paper examined various transformative remuneration interventions and their effectiveness in ensuring remuneration equality regardless of gender. The paper examined those practical challenges that further hinder the achievement of income equalities in the private sector. The paper asserted that there should be consequences such as termination of State contracts for companies that deliberately engage in the payment of unequal remunerations between male and female employees. This paper adopted a qualitative research methodology. The data for this paper were sourced from the desk research, Acts, court decisions and international conventions dealing with income inequalities in South Africa. The paper concluded that companies need to strategise, track and measure income disparities and address the gender wage gap to promote equity and fairness in the workplace.

A Comparative Review of Education Policy in Brazil and South Africa: Divergent Trends in Inequality

The literature identifies that education policies in Brazil are the backbone of their success in reducing inequality as measured by the GINI index. Since 1994, Brazil is the only BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nation to achieve this. This article presents a comparative study of South Africa and Brazil, and the policies applied towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. Using the analytical framework of the SDG, the strategies of South Africa, and Brazil regarding education are considered in order to identify patterns and themes that can potentially explain the divergence of inequality trends of the two nations. The overarching finding is that subtle differences in education policies perpetuate inequality in South Africa, whereas analogous policies contribute to equality in Brazil. The main contribution of this study is that it locates faults in otherwise well-meaning education policies in South Africa. Keywords: comparative education, policies, Brazil, South Africa, inequality