Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: A History | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Wellesley College; date: 11 October 2024 Contemporary South Africa exhibits widespread and persistent poverty and an extraordinarily high level of inequality. Historically, poverty and inequality were forged by forms of racial subordination and discrimination shaped successively by slavery, by colonial settlement and conquest, and by a mining-based industrial revolution in the last quarter of the 19th century. The explosive growth of capitalism and urbanization in a colonial context shaped a set of institutions and social relations—the “native reserves,” migrant labor, pass laws, job reservation, urban segregation, and the like—which reached their most stringent form under apartheid legislation, from 1948 on. The political, social, and economic system of a

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Wellesley College; date: 11 October 2024 Contemporary South Africa exhibits widespread and persistent poverty and an extraordinarily high level of inequality. Historically, poverty and inequality were forged by forms of racial subordination and discrimination shaped successively by slavery, by colonial settlement and conquest, and by a mining-based industrial revol