Key legislation shaping post-apartheid inequality South Africa has a very high
unemployment rate, officially 31.9% as of Q3 in 2023. Redistribution aims to transfer white-owned commercial farms to Black South Africans.
Restitution involves giving compensation to land lost to whites due to apartheid, racism, and discrimination.
Educational disparities The spatial
segregation of
apartheid continues to affect educational opportunities. Black and low-income students face geographic barriers to good schools, which are usually located in affluent neighborhoods. ranked South Africa last out of 148 for the quality of maths and science education and 146th out of 148 for the quality of general education, behind almost all African countries despite one of the largest budgets for education on the African continent. The same report lists the biggest obstacle to doing business as an "Inadequately educated workforce". Education, therefore, remains one of the poorest areas of performance in post-apartheid South Africa and one of the biggest causes of continued inequality and poverty.
Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic The
COVID-19 pandemic has served to widen the gaps between existing levels of economic inequality in
South Africa, and poor, Black communities have been given the greatest burden largely due to insufficient government support during the pandemic. South Africa was criticized early for not enacting a
travel ban on international travelers as COVID-19 began ravaging other countries. Restrictions included a ban on international travelers, school closures, and the prohibition of large group gatherings including 100 people or more. Two weeks into the lock down further rules were implemented, including the closure of non-essential businesses and a controversial sales ban on liquor, tobacco, and vaping products. Close to 10 million low-income individuals lost their jobs during this time. As the 6-week lock down came to an end, South Africa began to reduce the severity of lock down rules, citing successful containment, but the South African government was criticized for inflating positive results of early containment procedures without evidence to support their claims. Hospitals already lacked the resources to handle their pre-COVID case loads and were quickly overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases early on in the pandemic, necessitating other health problems to be sidelined.
Domestic violence cases against women and children in the lower economic classes skyrocketed. An emergency food box program was eventually created to fight food insecurity, but most poor communities never received the help. Less than 100,000 of the boxes were distributed across South Africa in the first year and a half of the program's creation. Economically disadvantaged communities found immense fault with the inequitable government efforts regarding food allocation, testing centers, and the distribution of
personal protective equipment (PPE). Brewing public frustration over economic losses, lock down measures, the lack of available medical interventions, and the arrest of former South African president
Jacob Zuma resulted in widely attended protests that devolved into destructive riots in
KwaZulu-Natal and
Johannesburg in 2021. The events now known as the
2021 South African unrest, the Zuma riots, or the July 2021 riots, escalated into the most severe violence South Africa has witnessed since the conclusion of
apartheid, and resulted in the arrests of over 5,500 individuals and the deaths of 354. == Wealth inequality ==