Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa

Extract

Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. By Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. 464p. $55.00.

Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass present an immense amount of quantitative and qualitative information regarding inequality in South Africa during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. Their descriptive findings involve assertions that both support and challenge existing knowledge. For example, they conclude that during the apartheid era, there was significant redistribution of income by the state to poorer sections of the population; that apartheid “converted the state-imposed advantages of race into the market-rewarded advantages of class” (p. 379); the “deracialization” of class began not with the assumption of power by the African National Congress in 1994 but rather in the early 1970s; the end of apartheid has not led to a reduction but to an increase of inequality; the “distributive regime” that produces inequality did not really change after majority rule was achieved in 1994; there are now as many rich black South Africans as there are white South Africans; and that the most significant contributor to inequality is the high level of unemployment.