Inequality between African South Africans is as great a political risk factor for South Africa as inequality between race groups.
The Gini-coefficient is a measure of inequality. On this measure a score of 0 would indicate perfect equality where every person in a particular group had exactly the same income. A score of 1 would mean perfect inequality were one person in the group earned all the income for that group.
In 2008 South Africa's Gini-coefficient was at 0.66. White South Africans were the most equal with a score of 0.46, followed by Indians at 0.54, and by Coloured people at 0.56. African South Africans were the most unequal income group in the country with a score of 0.61.
It is often repeated in South Africa that inequality between race groups poses a threat to South Africa's political stability. Some political parties have used such inter-racial inequality as a scare tactic. The undertone to some of their analyses of inequality is that ‘the blacks' will wreak revenge on ‘the whites' if the latter do not ensure that the former get a greater stake in the economy. Lately some black business groups, most notably the Black Management Forum, have joined the refrain.
Doubtless the risks inherent in South Africa's level of inequality are real. However, it is by no means certain that the risks are restricted to inter-racial inequality. Intra-racial inequality is just as likely to destabilize the country.
Consider the following scenario:
Many poor and black South Africans may take it as given that ‘white South Africa' got rich on the back of historical injustices. To some extent they may have made peace with this or at least accepted it as a historical ‘fact'. It is also possible that many of these same poor and black South Africans assumed in 1994 that their leaders would lead them out of poverty and into a more equitable society. These poor black people now feel betrayed. They have become deeply skeptical about the priorities of their leaders. They are also very angry for it is one thing to have been downtrodden by ‘the whites' but for their own people to have ‘betrayed' them may generate more intense emotions.
Fact or fiction? The above scenario may well be an accurate assessment of sentiment brewing in many poor black communities.
Certainly it is doubtful that these communities rejoice in announcements in business newspapers of new BEE windfalls befalling South Africa's new black business elite. It is doubtful that the residents of South Africa's poorer townships and squatter camps see their salvation resting in the employment equity policies of the government. Surely after 15 years of squalor they are coming to understand that these policies offer very little to them.
And yet South Africa's black elite seem to be so distant from this scenario. They speak with such passion about BEE and affirmative action. Listening to them you would believe that these policies have equal relevance to all black South Africans. Moreover you would believe that these policies attract universal black support. The new black business elite speak as if their wealth has been acquired on behalf of all black people - as if they carried a mandate to become rich on the behalf of black people in general.
Many of the black elite go even further. The Black Management Forum for example derides the white middle and upper classes for being greedy and for being unwilling to ‘share' their wealth with black people. Between the lines one can read all sorts of threats that if whites do not ‘give' ‘black people' a greater share of the economy then ‘the black community' will rise up in some sort of second revolution against white people.
They seem certain that the repercussions of such an uprising will be exclusive to the white middle and upper classes. The inference is that black solidarity will transcend inequality among black South Africans to insulate the black middle and upper classes from the effects of such an uprising.
Such confidence in black solidarity is misplaced. Does the Black Management Forum really imagine a scenario where the metaphorical mob will move down the metaphorical street of the leafy suburb and knock on every door to ascertain the race of the occupant and when finding that the occupant is black will move peacefully by to loot and pillage only the white neighbours - because that is in effect what they are suggesting.
If they do believe it they are also at least 18 months too late. For the political tone surrounding wealth and redistribution in the country has also changed. The political left in the ruling ANC/SACP/Cosatu alliance now talk about black wealth with the same disdain once reserved for white wealth. Black capitalists are presented as sellouts. Calls are made to socialise the wealth of the super rich. A number of prominent black commentators have started to question the ethics and the morality of empowerment policy. Very few whites have done the same because they know that the consequences will be to be branded as a racist - as will no doubt be the consequence of this column.
The black upper classes are wrong to suggest that the ‘black uprising' will be directed exclusively at whites. The ‘second revolution' if it comes will not be in the form of a mob in the street but in the form of a leftist faction winning policy autonomy in the alliance and bringing about dramatic changes to economic policy in the country. These changes will to a lesser or greater extent be hostile to private wealth, much of which will be nationalized on behalf of ‘the people'.
It is therefore a bit like living in country with many emperors, none of which have any clothes, to hear the Black Management Forum's tired refrain that whites will be on the receiving end of some uncertain black uprising and that ‘we blacks' have warned about this all along.
The black elites and middle classes are afraid and unable to admit that they now have much in common with the whites they deride. They too want comfortable houses, safe neighbourhoods, good schools for their children, and nice holidays over Christmas. They too have a stake in the country being governed effectively so as to safeguard both the financial and human investments they have made. But at the same time they remain reluctant to acknowledge that their own lifestyles have become so intertwined with those of ‘the whites' that it is futile to try and distinguish the one from the other. Certainly many of those on the left of the ruling alliance have already come to this conclusion. To believe in the protection of black solidarity in the face of growing black inequality is naïve racial romanticism and offers the black elites and middle classes no protection against a policy takeover by Cosatu and the SACP.
Statement issued by the South African Institute of Race Relations, December 14 2009
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily email newsletter
