There is general consensus in South Africa that economic inequality has remained very high in the past twenty-one years of democracy. Using standard measures, all estimates place income inequality in South Africa at above 0.60. Where there is disagreement is whether this necessitates shifting to a focus on class, rather than the predominant focus on race in the public discourse. Almost a decade ago, Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass argued that economic inequality had become more of a class than a race issue. Since then many papers have been written effectively substantiating their argument that ‘race had given way to class’ and that ‘the basis of disadvantage [had] shifted from race to class’. This is, of course, highly debatable.

Isobel Frye and her co-researchers have observed that ‘poverty and inequality in South Africa have a very clear racial bias as a result of colonial and apartheid policies of racial discrimination and deliberate impoverishment’. Similarly, Haroon Bhorat and Carlene van der Westhuizen have argued that ‘in the South African context, the strong inequality between racial groups as a result of apartheid has always been a significant driver of aggregate inequality’. In fact, Bhorat and van der Westhuizen. demonstrate that ‘it is very clear that African inequality remained virtually unchanged over the period (1995-2005) with the 1995 and 2005 Lorenz curve almost indistinguishable. In contrast, the Lorenz curve for white individuals graphically confirm increasing inequality within this cohort over the period.’ Arguably, the inequalities are even starker if asset inequality between racial groups is considered.

In other words, even though inequality is a function of an under-transformed labour market and the skewed structure of the economy in South Africa, the entrenched legacy of apartheid colonialism has ensured that it increases and remains highly racialised. Although the history of Dutch and British colonialism is common knowledge, it sometimes bears briefly recounting, given the tendency to gloss over the entrenched racial inequalities it left behind.

British and Dutch colonialism established an economic system in South Africa that primarily served the interests of the metropole at the expense of the indigenous people. The system was based on the extraction and exportation of minerals, and the importation of luxury goods for the benefit of the white minority. The apartheid regime, which officially started in 1948, extended this system under the specific banner of Afrikaner nationalism.