Devan Pillay - New South African Review 6: The Crisis of Inequality

Published in South Africa by:

Wits University Press

1 Jan Smuts Avenue

Johannesburg 2001

www.witspress.co.za

Published edition Wits University Press 2018

Compilation Edition editors 2018

Chapters Individual contributors 2018

Cover photograph: Bloubosrand Kya Sands Johnny Miller

First published 2018

http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/22018010558

ISBN 978-1-77614-055-8 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-77614-098-5 (PDF)

ISBN 978-1-77614-099-2 (EPUB)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.

Edited by Monica Seeber

Project managed by Hazel Cuthbertson

Indexed by Miri van Rooyen

Cover designed by Hothouse South Africa

Typeset by MPS

INTRODUCTION:
The global crisis of inequality and its South African manifestations

Devan Pillay

CHAPTER 1:
Inequality in South Africa

Neva Makgetla

CHAPTER 2:
A national minimum wage in South Africa: A tool to reduce inequality?

Jana Mudronova and Gilad Isaacs

CHAPTER 3:
The politics of poverty and inequality in South Africa: Connectivity, abjections and the problem of measurement

Sarah Bracking

CHAPTER 4:
The financialisation of the poor and the reproduction of inequality

David Neves

CHAPTER 5:
Liberal democracy, inequality and the imperatives of alternative politics: Nigeria and South Africa

Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba

CHAPTER 6:
Liberalism and anti-liberalism in South Africa. Or, is an egalitarian liberalism possible?

Daryl Glaser

CHAPTER 7:
Equality and inequality in South Africa: What do we actually want? And how do we get it?

Roger Southall

CHAPTER 8:
Analysis must rise: A political economy of falling fees

Stephanie Allais

CHAPTER 9:
Education, the state and class inequality: The case for free higher education in South Africa

Enver Motala, Salim Vally and Rasigan Maharajh

CHAPTER 10:
Still waiting: The South African governments pending promise of equality for people with disabilities

Jacqui Ala and David Black

CHAPTER 11:
Big fish in small ponds: Changing stratification and inequalities in small towns in the Karoo region, South Africa

CHAPTER 12:
Spatial defragmentation in rural South Africa: A prognosis of agrarian reforms

Samuel Kariuki

CHAPTER 13:
Mining, rural struggles and inequality on the platinum belt

CHAPTER 14:
Challenging environmental injustice and inequality in contemporary South Africa

Jacklyn Cock

CHAPTER 15:
The geography of nuclear power, class and inequality

Jo-Ansie van Wyk

TABLES

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 15

FIGURES

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 15

Devan Pillay

We are, once again, in world history, approaching an age of extremes, as the global crisis of accumulation approaches its social and ecological limits, generating huge inequalities last seen in the nineteenth century (). This has resulted in increasing crises of political legitimacy in various countries and regions; the rise of populist leaders such as Donald Trump, the new president of the USA; and the decision by British voters (by a small majority) to leave the European Union. To a large extent the Right had successfully blamed immigration for rising unemployment, eclipsing the Lefts traditional focus on class inequality with a stronger emotional appeal of identity politics in particular race, ethnicity and/or religion. The rise of religious fundamentalism whether Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Islamic has reached alarming proportions in parts of the world. However, while recent elections in other major developed countries such as France and Germany reveal a rise in support for anti-immigration (and, indeed, neofascist) parties, a class politics seems to have resonance, particularly among younger voters. The Left has seen increased support in countries like Greece and Spain, and in the rise of Bernie Sanders in the USA, as well as Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party.

South Africa is a microcosm, with its own unique features, of this global socio-economic and political crisis. Our colonial-apartheid past generated distinct racialised and gendered forms of inequality and poverty, but a rising black elite since 1994 reveals that at a fundamental level inequality is based on class conflict namely, the determination of the rich and powerful to maintain their privileges, against the struggles of the poor and excluded to obtain a share of the social surplus. The characterisation of our political economy as one that is dominated by white monopoly capital is analytically weak in that it directs social inquiry, politics and policy towards the racial content of capital and class domination, rather than class domination itself. Indeed, politically charged assertions about white monopoly capitalism are inclined to exaggerate the extent of white control of the economy, and downplay increased black participation. President Jacob Zumas assertion that only 3 per cent of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) is owned by black people, contradicts research commissioned by the JSE in December 2013 that black people own 23 per cent of the Top 100 companies listed; white South Africans own 22 per cent; foreign investors hold about 39 per cent of shares on the JSE, with a further 16 per cent an unclear mix of shareholder demographics (Hogg 2015). While exact ownership figures remain an issue of dispute, few would disagree that ownership of shares does not necessarily translate into control of companies, and this requires further research. The 3 per cent is nevertheless repeatedly cited on the ANN7 TV channel owned by the Gupta family, who have been waging a fight-back against charges that, through the president, they have been trying to capture the state.

In other words, if white monopoly capitalism is the problem, is black monopoly capitalism the solution, at least in the short to medium term? Certain elite interests might privately mutter yes, whereas those on the Left, like the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) may find themselves serving a black elite agenda as they seek an authentic nationalism in the short to medium term (or first stage of the national democratic revolution).1 The socialist second stage, of course, may never arrive, as new elites consolidate their power, both against the older white elites and against the working class and poor. It is the story of most national liberation movements throughout the postcolonial world.

A sociological analysis of class domination, following Miliband (1987), reveals a