Southern Centre For Inequality Studies

Abstract This article estimates the distribution of personal wealth in South Africa by combining microdata covering the universe of income tax returns, household surveys, and macroeconomic balance sheet statistics. South Africa is characterized by unparalleled levels of wealth concentration. The top 10 percent own 86 percent of aggregate wealth and the top 0.1 percent close to one-third. The top 0.01 percent of the distribution (3,500 individuals) concentrate 15 percent of household net worth, more than the bottom 90 percent as a whole. Such levels of inequality can be accounted for in all forms of assets at the top end, including housing, pension funds, and financial assets. There has been no sign of decreasing inequality since the end of apartheid.

This paper estimates the distribution of personal wealth in South Africa by combining tax microdata, household surveys, and macroeconomic balance sheet statistics. We systematically compare estimates of the wealth distribution obtained by direct measurement of net worth, rescaling of reported wealth to balance sheet totals, and capitalization of income flows. We document major inconsistencies between available data sources, in particular regarding the measurement of dividends, corporate assets, and wealth held through trusts. Both household surveys and tax data remain insufficient to properly capture capital incomes. Notwithstanding a significant degree of uncertainty, our findings reveal unparalleled levels of wealth concentration. The top 10 per cent own 86 per cent of aggregate wealth and the top 0.1 per cent close to one-third. The top 0.01 per cent of the distribution (3,500 individuals) own 15 per cent of household net worth, more than the bottom 90 per cent as a whole. Such high levels of inequality can be accounted for in all forms of assets, including housing, pension funds, and other financial assets. Our series show no sign of decreasing wealth inequality since apartheid; if anything, we find that inequality has remained broadly stable and has even slightly increased within top wealth groups.

Insufficient attention has been given to how workers organizations are challenging precarious work through new hybrid forms of organizing in the Global South. In this article we examine three examples where workers innovate and experiment with new forms of worker organization in three African cities. These include a traditional union reaching out to precarious workers in Cape Town, hybrid forms of worker organizations in Kampala, and workers in the gig economy starting a process of self-organization in Johannesburg. We argue that there is manifold experimentation taking place on the periphery of the labour movement and that the forms of organizations often differ from traditional unionism. Our comparisons reveal that if current trade union organizations are to meet the needs of informal workers and the new workers of the digital economy they will need to transform, rediscover their power and the capabilities necessary to realize this power.

The question raised in this article is whether the key role played under apartheid by labour in the transition to democracy can be revived in the struggle against the persistent and deepening inequality of the post-apartheid period. We argue that the transition to a neoliberal state in the post-apartheid period has fragmented workers and weakened their capacity to build sustainable workplace organization. However, in spite of this, we identify the emergence of collective action and organization amongst these precarious workers. We show how in response to the degeneration of their traditional organizations, these workers are rebuilding worker organization still very much inscribed in the organizational traditions built on the East Rand over 40 years ago. We challenge the pessimistic ‘end of labour’ thesis that suggests that the informalization of employment has made collective organization impossible.

Understanding wealth inequality has unique significance in South Africa. The co-existence of extreme poverty and extreme wealth is starkly visible. Apartheid-era inequality has persisted despite more than 20 years of democracy. Much of the recent research focus on inequality has been on inequality of income and of opportunities, especially quantitatively. With the recent project to release South African tax administrative data for research, this paper hopes to show how use of the tax administrative data can contribute to developing a refreshed quantitative analysis of wealth inequality, especially in estimating the top shares of the wealth distribution, and so contribute to the existing literature on wealth inequality in South Africa. The first section will explore why studying wealth inequality is of fundamental importance. The second section will review international data and methods used to research wealth inequality, before laying out suggested approach to doing such studies in South Africa.

This paper estimates the distribution of personal wealth in South Africa by combining microdata covering the universe of income tax returns, household surveys, and macroeconomic balance sheets statistics. We document unparalleled levels of wealth concentration. The top 10% own 86% of aggregate wealth and the top 0.1% close to one third. The top 0.01% of the distribution (3, 500 individuals) concentrate 15% of household net worth, more than the bottom 90% as a whole. Such levels of inequality can be accounted for in all forms of assets at the top end, including housing, pension funds and financial assets. We find no sign of decreasing inequality since the end of apartheid. This article is arevisedversion of the article"Estimating the Distribution of Household Wealth in South Africa"(World Inequality Lab Working Paper 2020/06)

Understanding wealth inequality has unique significance in South Africa. The co-existence of extreme poverty and extreme wealth is starkly visible. Apartheid-era inequality has persisted despite more than 20 years of democracy. Much of the research on inequality has focused on inequality of income and of opportunities. There is a large gap in understanding wealth inequality—levels of wealth inequality, how wealth is held, and the mechanism through which wealth inequality is produced and reproduced. This gap requires a specific research agenda, which this paper suggests. Section 1 explores why studying wealth inequality is of fundamental importance. Section 2 reviews international data and methods used to research wealth inequality in other countries, before laying out a suggested approach to doing such studies in South Africa.

INTRODUCTION: Scalable psychological treatments to address depression among adolescents are urgently needed. This is particularly relevant to low-income and middle-income countries where 90% of the world's adolescents live. While digital delivery of behavioural activation (BA) presents a promising solution, its feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness among adolescents in an African context remain to be shown. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This study is a two-arm single-blind individual-level randomised controlled pilot trial to assess the feasibility, acceptability and initial efficacy of digitally delivered BA therapy among adolescents with depression. The intervention has been coproduced with adolescents at the study site. The study is based in the rural northeast of South Africa in the Bushbuckridge subdistrict of Mpumalanga province. A total of 200 adolescents with symptoms of mild to moderately severe depression on the Patient Health Questionnaire Adolescent Version will be recruited (1:1 allocation ratio). The treatment group will receive BA therapy via a smartphone application (the Kuamsha app) supported by trained peer mentors. The control group will receive an enhanced standard of care. The feasibility and acceptability of the intervention will be evaluated using a mixed methods design, and signals of the initial efficacy of the intervention in reducing symptoms of depression will be determined on an intention-to-treat basis. Secondary objectives are to pilot a range of cognitive, mental health, risky behaviour and socioeconomic measures; and to collect descriptive data on the feasibility of trial procedures to inform the development of a further larger trial. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study has been approved by the University of the Witwatersrand Human Research Ethics Committee (MED20-05-011) and the Oxford Tropical Research Ethics Committee (OxTREC 34-20). Study findings will be published in scientific open access peer-reviewed journals, presented at scientific conferences and communicated to participants, their caregivers, public sector officials and other relevant stakeholders. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBERS: This trial was registered on 19 November 2020 with the South African National Clinical Trials Registry (DOH-27-112020-5741) and the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR202206574814636).

Abstract The introduction of the concept of social upgrading was a welcome development in the study of Global Production Networks ( gpn s). We argue that although social upgrading is primarily a result of labour agency rather than automatically trickling down from economic upgrading, without economic upgrading social upgrading will not be sustainable. We show how it was through the use of their structural power, the development of associational power through building a national industrial union, the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa, and institutional and societal power, that workers realised social upgrading improvements in the automobile industry in South Africa. The rights consolidated in legislation and the institutions established were the result of workers using their power in strategic ways. We argue for an alternative approach to social upgrading that foregrounds workers power as a crucial determinant of social upgrading. This, we conclude, will require a labour-led development path.

This paper examines how capabilities inequality is stabilised through its consequences on those at both ends of the distribution. It outlines the development of the balance model, which is argued to help highlight these consequences. Specifically, how adverse environments associated with lack of access to resources and poor treatment can lead to internal consequences which further corrode capabilities. At the same time, denial of this corrosion or its importance is critical for those who benefit from the inequality. To avoid moral constraints being triggered it is important, necessary even, for them to see those who suffer as outside of their moral universe, or their suffering to be in no way associated with their advantage. Corrosion and denial work to stabilise the system. For those in the middle of the distribution, they may work to do so in combination. Appreciating these internalised consequences is key to addressing inequality in South Africa.

While the tech giants are using privatisation to present themselves as providers of solutions to global problems, digitalisation is creating new forms of transnational activism. Global unions are emerging as players in this contest, helping to build counter power at both the local and global level. Through a comparison of the use of digital technology in two case studies in Africa involving two different global unions the article demonstrates how global unions can, through their intermediary coordinating role at the supranational level, deepen worker power. KEYWORDS: Global unions; digital technology; informal work; power resources; union revitalisation

Despite the resurgence internationally of strikes in recent years, studies on the temporality of strike waves within a long-wave perspective has been marked by silence in the literature. This paper revisits the debate on the veracity of long-wave theory to explain the temporality of upsurges in strike activity and the disputes on the measurement of strike waves from an international perspective. The paper applies long-wave theory to South Africa, which is a new contribution and proposes a new quantitative approach to examine the long-term patterning of strikes. This study finds that the predictive power of long-wave theory—that an escalation of the class struggle unfolds around the peaks and troughs of economic long waves—holds throughout the period 1886–2022. This paper makes a new finding that long waves of strikes display a countercyclical patterning to long waves of capitalist development, providing proof of the relative autonomy of the class struggle from long waves.

Abstract How and in what sequence do social structures, contingent events, and agents’ decisions combine over time to bring about a new populist right? To answer this question, we propose a framework to analyze social processes spanning three levels of analysis: global political economy, national political articulation, and subnational political geography. We challenge static theories that focus solely on the “supply and demand” for populism, as well as purely contingent accounts of a “perfect storm.” Instead, we argue that processes across these three levels link together in causal chains to produce an “ecosystem” of right-wing populist support. To specify this framework, we analyze the ascendance of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil between 2013 and 2018, drawing upon quantitative macroeconomic and protest event data, qualitative interview and archival data collected from private sector actors and social movements, and geo-spatial electoral data. Finally, we probe the generalizability of this analytical framework through a discussion of secondary work on recent cases of right-wing populism in the Global South. By focusing on the dynamic connection of inter-scalar processes over time, we illustrate how our framework paves the way for further conjunctural analyses of the current right-wing populist upsurge.

Abstract Aggarwals are one of the dominant business castes in North India that are well represented in professional spheres. I focus on Agarwals that migrated from parts of Haryana and are involved in business in Delhi. It is established that businesses in India are structured by caste and family ties, however, little is known about how each of these social structures are sociologically structured and inhabited in contemporary Delhi. This case study, visibilises the processual formation of caste as network through a concerted effort by the elites. Through an intergenerational interrogation of the women’s question within families, the study, shows the changing processes of self-making. The case study shows that the success of a ‘middle’ caste to become an urban ‘upper’ caste lies in its careful negotiation of the women’s question.