Deputy President David Mabuza has warned that South Africa is at the “crossroads” and remains a country with “dangerously high” levels of inequality.
Mabuza said the biggest threat to the country’s stability was the marginalisation of the majority of the population from mainstream economic activity and empowerment.
“Quite frankly, as we grapple with the social, economic and political afterlives of the pandemic [Covid-19], our democratic dispensation is at a crossroads,” said Mabuza.
“Whereas the people remain resolute in fulfilling the promise of freedom and democracy that we shared and embraced in 1994, the hard truth we must face and confront is that we are not yet near where we should be.”
Mabuza was addressing the Informal Sector Symposium at the Mpekweni Beach Resort in Port Alfred, Eastern Cape.
He said the country’s labour market and industrial policy choices had not lived up to the expectations of the majority and international partners who supported the struggle against apartheid.
Mabuza added that the country has an unhealthy concentration of income, wealth, power, and opportunities in the hands of the already privileged.
“Adversely, this results in a steady rise in chronic levels of basic social and economic insecurity for those already on the margins of our society, most of whom survive through the informal economy and are cut off from global value chains of mainstream economic activities.”
He noted that nearly three decades into the democratic dispensation, more than half of the population still live in poverty, stating that despite visible progress made, South Africa remains one of the most “dangerously unequal societies” in the world.
Mabuza further said researchers Dieter von Fintel and Anna Orthofer revealed in 2020 that 1% of the population owns about 50% of South Africa’s wealth, and that the top 10% of the population owns more than 90% of the wealth collectively.
“Whichever way you look at it, this is an unhealthy and unsustainable state of affairs which undermines our collective efforts as a democratic government to build a socially cohesive society that is united in its pursuit of an inclusive, equitable, and better life for all.”
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