Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa [Hardcover]

Professor Jeremy Seekings (Author), Nicoli Nattrass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0300108923 | ISBN-13: 978-0300108927

The distribution of incomes in South Africa in 2004, ten years after the transition to democracy, was probably more unequal than it had been under apartheid. In this book, Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass explain why this is so, offering a detailed and comprehensive analysis of inequality in South Africa from the midtwentieth century to the early twenty-first century. They show that the basis of inequality shifted in the last decades of the twentieth century from race to class. Formal deracialization of public policy did not reduce the actual disadvantages experienced by the poor nor the advantages of the rich. The fundamental continuity in patterns of advantage and disadvantage resulted from underlying continuities in public policy, or what Seekings and Nattrass call the “distributional regime.” The post-apartheid distributional regime continues to divide South Africans into insiders and outsiders. The insiders, now increasingly multiracial, enjoy good access to well-paid, skilled jobs; the outsiders lack skills and employment.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is one of the most important social science studies on South Africa in recent years. Carefully researched and tightly argued, it pays every attention to the malign legacies of apartheid. But it also criticizes post-apartheid policies, demonstrating that while class has largely replaced race as the determinant of inequality, income inequalities may in fact have deepened since the end of white minority rule."-Colin Bundy, Director and Principal, School of Oriental & African Studies (Colin Bundy )

"This provocative book analyzes the origins of inequality in the apartheid era and their persistence, even intensification, through a decade of African National Congress rule. Seekings and Nattrass make a powerful case for critical policy changes on behalf of the millions of the dispossessed and unemployed who have had only meager material benefits, if any at all, from a decade of democratic governance."-Alan Jeeves, Southern African Research Centre, Kingston, Canada (Alan Jeeves )

About the Author

Jeremy Seekings is a professor in the sociology and politics departments, University of Cape Town. Nicoli Nattrass is professor in the school of economics, University of Cape Town.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300108923
• ISBN-13: 978-0300108927
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,445,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Snore, May 8, 2009

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This review is from: Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa (Hardcover)

"Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa" shows how the "distributional regime" in South Africa has created one of the most unequal societies on earth. The book is is a good example of what's right and what's wrong with modern social science. On the one hand, it is meticulous, methodologically self-aware, jargon-free, and based on the latest literature (but not on fieldwork). However, the book is also dry, boring, and strangely repetitive, as if parts of it were published separately. I found myself skimming a few sections.

The main thesis is that inequality in South Africa is now driven by unemployment rather than racist laws. To remedy the situation, the authors would relax labor laws and improve education for rural blacks. (They would also step up welfare payments, but social grants have exploded since the book was written, rendering this discussion anachronistic.) These are valid points -- but they are the stuff of op-eds, not books from Yale University Press.

The social science "core" of the book is a belabored, deathly analysis of income data collected in the 1990s. The authors admit that huge gaps in the data make it hard to draw an accurate portrait of inequality -- but they try anyway. They also admit that class analysis is little more than pointless taxonomy if researchers can't explain how class differences influence behavior and politics, as is the case in South Africa -- but they analyze class anyway.

Does anyone need a 400-page book to know that racial inequality in South Africa is being replaced by class inequality, with poor black populations losing out either way? Not really. For university libraries only.