Despite increases in student numbers and other costs incurred by the sector as a whole, state funding has not increased where in it amounted to 0. The funding has actually declined for higher education as a percentage of tertiary education and has generally hovered between 0. In , during the height of apartheid, UCT had 3 African students; in there were 4,, and in , 5, in comparison the enrolments for white students are 7, in , 8, in and 10, in At Stellenbosch University, African students in numbered 3, compared to 15, white students.
At the UWC, African student numbers increased dramatically in the s to 6, in , then declined in to 4, students, and increased slightly again in to 5, The former Afrikaans language universities and distance education providers attracted the highest number of black students but overall the number of students qualifying for university admission has steadily decreased.
In provinces with larger numbers of poorer and rural schools the decline in matriculation exemption rates have been more pronounced. Equally worrying is the concern that many who qualify for university are unable to make the grade. Consequently, despite government and university management pressures to increase throughput rates, too many students take longer to complete their degrees or drop out. At the latter, the institutional weaknesses, poorly prepared students and resource constraints account for the greater burdens faced by the historically black universities.
Consequently, the historically white universities, given their range of past advantages, remain better resource-endowed, grant many more postgraduate degrees and produce more of the research output, although these are dismally low by international standards.
The macro-economic policy embraced by the democratic government has enormous implications for the role of higher education insociety. Students are encouraged to take degrees in the natural sciences and commerce, rather than the arts and the humanities. Critics of the GEAR policy challenge these themes.
Two assumptions guide thinking and discussion within this viewpoint. Consequently, and this is the second point, universities should change and reconfigure themselves to produce the type of graduates the economy requires and help make the South African economy more competitive in this new globalization era. This is not necessarily the case. Aculture and history of racism remains pervasive in South African society and this directly affects labour market employment practices.
Two contradictory trends were registered in the South African labour market. Between and highly skilled, graduate students were in demand; the lower the level of qualification and skills the less the demand. The growth in the total number of jobs was Those with only primary school education and below showed negative growth rates - the economy had no jobs for them. After these trends changed. More astonishing is that employment for black students with degrees actually declined by Employment for Coloured students with degrees increased only slightly by 3.
The South African economy is highly differentiated. Any role that higher education will play in producing graduates for the labour market will have to work with a much more differentiated notion of the South African economy and the racially influenced hiring practices of the labour market. There are many links between universities and the polity in post South Africa — formal and informal, direct and indirect. Higher education institutions have in the post period produced significant numbers of graduates who took up positions in the public sector.
Some universities, such as the University of the Western Cape, lost many of its senior academic staff to the public sector. Without this input the success of the transition, the bases for democratic consolidation and the quality of governance would have been less secure.
The role of higher education institutions in policy-making and evaluation has also increased dramatically since , with many academics supplementing their university incomes by contentiously doing consultancy work for the state. Higher education institutions provide a social and cultural space for both academic and political elites to meet and establish relationships.
In a country like South Africa with its new political system and a legacy of deep division the importance of a forum for communication, bringing people from diverse backgrounds together, is vitally important for the consolidation of its democratic dispensation. At the same time the relationship between universities and the state is not an easy one. An inevitable tension exists between the expectations of the state and the role universities see themselves playing in relation to the political system.
Graduates from both black and white universities have taken jobs in the state, private sector and civil society. They have moved into former white neighbourhoods, their children in the main attending former white schools, and are participating in civil society structures formerly reserved for whites.
In this middle class sense, some public spaces in South Africa have become deracialised and universities, in the creation of the emerging black elite, can be held indirectly responsible for this social impact. The growth of the South African economy from the decade-long period of recession and political turmoil of the s can be attributed in large measure to having the people to take up high level skilled employment.
Indirectly, the increase in the purchasing power of the new black middle class has directly helped the economy grow. The quality of life of the new middle class empowers this class. Given the degree of a civic socially responsible ideology encouraged by the state and embraced by this class, it is positioned to put resources, skills, time and ideas back into the impoverished communities from which many have come.
More explicitly, at the political level transition theorists have long established that without a significant middle class, societies undergoing democratic transition are less likely to consolidate their democratic institutions Diamond, Linz et al.
Linz argues that a test for democratic consolidation is that when given a serious crisis, key elites will choose to abandon the democratic institutions of their society. This seems less likely in the South African case, demonstrating the importance, legitimacy and value that both the middle and working classes bestow upon the hard won democratic institutions of the society. Universities, which were once directly active participants in the racist, apartheid project, have contributed to a new democratic culture.
Many of these new democratic practices can be traced to the student resistance of the s, more firmly located within the historically black universities, but also influencing practices in the historically white universities, as students and academics moved from the former to the latter institutions.
The many forums, seminars and lectures by prominent speakers, most identifying closely with a democratic ethos, help to spread such values and consolidate them beyond university settings. This is not to deny that undemocratic values still pervade the society, but the democratic trend appears to be dominant. The corporate media, which have adopted a critical stance towards the new government, has nevertheless also experienced internal changes. Many of the new journalists received their education at South African higher education institutions and are products of the s student revolts.
In their new role in a powerful site of ideological production, they contribute towards spreading information, democratic values and critical analyses, thereby enhancing South African democracy.
Those among the poor and the working class daily bear the brunt of such abuse. Many from these groups find it difficult to get into higher education institutions because they are unable to afford the fees. The students from poor and working class backgrounds in the s did enter universities in significant numbers. However, soon the historically black universities complained that they had to increase fees and monitor fee payment more systematically than previously because they did not receive any additional funding from the state.
The fees struggle also brought to the attention of students other issues, such as the continued poor quality of student resources at the historically black universities in comparison to the historically white universities, failure to change the curriculum sufficiently to move beyond Eurocentric paradigms, the demand for alternative forums of democratic governance at these institutions and a host of other alternative ideas constituting post-apartheid institutions.
Many student activists once firmly located within the anti-apartheid struggle, many fighting within the fold of the ANC, now face the ANC as government.
They and other progressive social forces are in the process of deciphering new ways of expressing their differences towards government policies and practices. The transition in social activism has been cautious given that the ANC is still fighting entrenched racist practices and is often itself a player in contemporary resistance discourses in South Africa.
In the main, it can be argued that it mostly reflects the values and goals repeatedly conveyed during the freedom struggle: to overcome the legacies of racism and exploitation. Yet the content of these are variously debated. Due to the nature of the transition and conservative macro-economic policies and elite ideology, higher education institutions, located as they are in the sphere of civil society, were in a relatively strong position in relation to the state.
These institutions assumed the role of either reproducing inherited social relations or changing them. They tend to reproduce inherited social relations and change them more slowly than the state and the majority of South Africans who participated in the struggle against apartheid wished. The Bank also notes that the equalizing role of social assistance on income inequality remains extraordinarily high.
Accordingly, the policy approach must emphasize equity rather than equality. Earnings and spending in South Africa, Pretoria, Income from salaries and wages from businesses accounted for Half, Less than one out of ten rand, 6.
Blacks shared In , other income accounted for As income is not evenly distributed among South Africans, so is household expenditure. The share of national consumption between the richest and poorest remains stagnant. Expenditure according to population groups differ sharply. When framed against population shares: The National Development Plan's uses the lower-bound poverty line of R prices as a target for eliminating all poverty below this line by In , Government envisages that it will cost R Poverty trends in South Africa: an examination of poverty trends between and Pretoria, b.
The distribution of unemployment reflects the nature of inequality in terms of race, gender, location and age. Unemployment affects blacks most. And black youth are the most affected by unemployment. Poverty trends in South Africa: an examination of absolute poverty between and Report No. Pretoria, c. The impact of social and economic inequality on economic development in South Africa.
The current unequal labour market was inherited from the apartheid labour market labour structure which was built on cheap black labour where the white working class were paid relatively high wages. Given the combination of high unemployment, a large number of non-earners remain at the bottom of wage distribution.
A further consequence of the sharp contrast between high and low wage earners is that data such as mean wages are not an accurate reflection of earnings. Wages is also contentious for its racialized structure.
The South African government makes reference to the triad of unemployment, poverty and inequality as representing the most urgent challenges facing south African society.
It is unclear how government sources rationally explain the triad in relationship, if the concepts are in a relationship at all. Understanding inequality relationally. Post-School Education Review, v. Inequality manifests from high levels of unemployment and poverty due largely to the control of global wealth; and incomes and investments resources of a small corporate and financial global elite whose interests dominate global events, including development.
Inequality has many dimensions, including race, gender, geography and economy which do not work in isolation. It is the concentration of wealth by a few that affect the political, social and cultural processes to the detriment of the most vulnerable. The claim that extreme inequality hinders the fight against poverty is a new dimension towards understanding development and theory. Oxfam research is showing that in Kenya, Indonesia and India, millions can be saved from poverty if income inequality were reduced.
It also argues against the claim that tackling inequality damages economic growth. The report refers to studies by the International Monetary Fund that document how economic inequality caused the global financial crises.
Ending extreme poverty and sharing prosperity: progress and policies. The respective measurables are reduced ratio headcount of extreme poverty, i. The shared prosperity goal is gauged by the income growth of the bottom 40 percent B The target for ending extreme poverty is ambitious and the policy and programme approaches are unknown.
Since the target is global, efforts by individual countries are not guaranteed. Contextual factors then will also be challenging. World Development Report: mind, society and behaviour, Psychological and anthropological research suggest that poverty generates a mental model through which the poor view themselves. For instance, it is believed that poor people can dull their capacity to imagine a better future.
The mental model intends to alter how poor people recognize their potential, thereby increasing developmental outcomes. Accordingly, development policy will be shaped by the World Bank's Global Insights Initiative Gini which aims to incorporate behavioral insights into intervention designs.
The United Nations argues that the three concepts of poverty, unemployment and inequality interact in complex ways, with evidence that high levels of social and economic inequality can constrain the scope for growth, in particular growth necessary to create jobs and reduce poverty.
Where there is high inequality, growth often reproduces existing patterns of distribution. The argument is in line with that of Oxfam, that the wealthy are the main beneficiaries.
The UN therefore argues that addressing inequality is a necessary condition for a sustainable decrease in poverty. Growth as a means of addressing poverty in the absence of public policies to address inequality may yield limited returns. A job is a narrow concept, time-bounded and requires inputs of labour resulting in a service or commodity. Work is a broader and inclusive concept which is critical for human development. Thus the idea is to improve human potentials. However, the causal link between work and development is not automatic.
The UNDP approach will target sectoral issues including youth, gender, agriculture, rural development, informal work and work during crisis. The Millennium Project's State of the Future identifies fifteen global challenges.
Regarding the challenge of the gap between the rich and poor, while poverty is decreasing, the per capita income gap and inequality is increasing. The increasing concentration of wealth is one of main factors undermining the rich-poor reduction. The World Economic Forum identified income disparity as the most likely global risk over the next decade, while in , growing unemployment and underemployment were seen as being both likely and serious. The ratio between wages and profit is increasingly and dangerously imbalanced, undermining long-term economic prosperity.
Piketty's book Capital in the twenty-first century argues that inequality is the inevitable outcome of capitalism. He argues that the period of falling inequality - as in Western Europe in the s and s - are aberrations of aggressive policy, i. Falling inequality over this period, he argues, was also caused by the massive destruction of the inherited property of the wealthy during World Wars 1 and 2.
Piketty's key postulation is that the returns on capital always exceed economic growth. Thus the earnings of capital, i.
The rich are able to save enough of their earnings to ensure that their stock of capital always grow as fast as the economy and so inequality widens. To combat inequality Piketty proposes higher marginal income tax rates for the wealthy and for a global wealth tax.
Without a wealth tax, inequality cannot be reduced because of the ability of the wealthy to hide their true income. The tax must be global because wealth is highly mobile and the wealthy will move it to more favourable tax regimes. The lessons for South Africa is not straight forward. Inequality in South Africa. The journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation, v.
In South Africa, by contrast, income inequality has hardly changed despite the social wage reaching about 16 million poor people. Inequality persists and is increasing. The price of inequality. London: Allen Lane, The bankers had taken bets that, without government assistance, would have brought them and the entire economy down.
While the virtue of market is supposed to be efficiency, it is not efficient. One of the basic laws of economics - necessary if the economy is to be efficient - is that demand equals supply.
But the world is in a state of huge unmet needs - where investments to bring the poor out of poverty, and development strategies and programmes are not properly developed. Rather than reversing inequality, it is growing, there is greater unfairness opportunity , breakdown of social cohesion, fundamental values are being eroded by the market system, and the political system is under great strain.
South Africa is among those countries that is grappling with these challenges. Inequality: What can be done? Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, The past provides both a yardstick by which we can judge what could be attainable in terms of reducing inequality and clues as to how it could be achieved.
Systematic empirical data, historical studies of income distribution and records of country experiences have improved recently. Inequality was reduced during the post-war decades in Europe.
This decline in inequality was the product of several equalizing forces in the period from to s. These equalizing mechanisms, including conscious polices - have subsequently ceased to operate or gone into reverse. Since then inequality has risen in many countries, including Latin America. Therefore bringing South Africa's structural inequality under clear focus is an urgent task.
It is clear that South Africa is a very different country after twenty years of institutionalized democracy. Successive African National Congress governments have made significant changes to the ordinary life of citizens.
Freedom is real for the majority. There are major gains socially, politically and culturally. South Africa is well known around the world for its progressive Constitution and strong public institutions. However, poverty, unemployment and inequality remain the country's most challenging problems. It seems that despite a progressive public policy platform, South Africa's problems appear to be rooted in the legacy of apartheid.
The inherited legacy explains why high levels of inequality persists in relation to race, gender and location, which is compounded by inter-generational continuities. It is the foundation of government's effort to improve the daily lives of the poor. The social wage includes free primary health care; no-fee paying schools; social grants in the form of old-age pensions and child support grants; Reconstruction and Development Programme housing; and the provision of basic services to households in the form of water, electricity and sanitation.
Some outcomes of the social wage have been impressive: 1. The social wage appears to have become the only source of income of livelihood for the poor. Poverty is multi-dimensional and linked to other social, economic and political factors in a given context. There are significant differences in levels of poverty among the adult population when examined against the level of education they attained.
In , only 6. In stark contrast, those individuals with little or no education suffered significantly higher levels of poverty. More than three-quarters The system catered for the aged, disabled, children in need, foster parents and many others too poor to meet their basic social requirements.
Under this programme, free health care programmes were implemented for pregnant women and small children, and free meals were provided for between 3,5 to 5 million school children. Although the RDP was viewed as the cornerstone of government development policy, it did not deliver as it was thought particularly in terms of economic growth which impacted negatively on the policy itself.
It was indicated that the new government experienced some difficulties in the implication of the RDP such as a fiscal constraint due to the poor fiscal and economic legacy it inherited after fifty years of Apartheid and twenty years of the Total Strategy; secondly, an organisational constraint due to the lack of an efficient public service and a distressful inability of the new government to build the necessary state capacity, and thirdly, the inability of the new government to prioritise the RDP and to integrate it as the guiding principle of its socio-economic policies.
To sum up these challenges, it appears that RDP ignored the gathering of new taxes, rather focusing, far too narrowly on fiscal prudence and the reallocation of existing revenues.
In addition, the government suffered from lack of sufficiently skilled managers, while policy co-ordination and implementation methods used were not proven successful.
When faced with these constraints Government introduced a macroeconomic policy framework called the Growth, Employment and Redistribution GEAR strategy in to stimulate faster economic growth which was required to provide resources to meet social investment needs.
The policy encompassed most of the social objectives of the RDP but was also aimed at reducing fiscal deficits, lowering inflation, maintaining exchange rate stability, decreasing barriers to trade and liberalizing capital flows. Under GEAR policy, fiscal deficit, inflation and government consumption targets were all slightly met, reporting figures of 2.
Additionally, management of public finances improved drastically under GEAR and the only success seen with regard to GDP was that the negative growth rate of the early nineties was reversed.
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