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id21 News
Release
May 12, 2003
South African blacks get
poorer whilst whites get richer
Incomes in South African
black households fell by 19 per cent between 1995 and 2000, whilst white
household incomes rose by 15 per cent. Last year, two out of three black
households in Cape Town townships did not have enough food to eat. These
are the shocking findings of research recently published by id21 insights
examining the causes and dynamics of black chronic poverty in South
Africa.
The research, carried out
by the University of Western Cape, surveyed black townships around Cape
Town, where it found 76 per cent of households living below the poverty
line of ZAR352 (US$42) per month. Over half of these households had
no waged income, and almost one third reported that the main breadwinner
had lost a job in the previous year.
Waged employment is vital
to poor households in South Africa, partly because colonial land-grabbing
and apartheid destroyed the black farming economy in order to create
a cheap labour force. Conditions for poor black workers have worsened
over the last decade as South African employers have opted to invest
in further mechanisation rather than labour, resulting in a loss of
up to one million formal sector jobs and a doubling of the unemployment
rate to 30 per cent.
With such a high unemployment
rate poor households are vulnerable to employer exploitation, and over
one-third of wage earners in the study were still found to be below
the poverty line. Interestingly, educational attainment in these areas
appears to have little effect on the individual's job prospects.
Chronic poverty also puts
households at risk of malnutrition, disease and violence: the main causes
of death were avoidable effects of poverty: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (39
per cent) and physical assault (29 per cent).
Researchers Cobus de Swardt
and Andries du Toit argue that government initiatives are urgently needed
to protect such households against the risks and exploitation chronic
poverty exposes them to. They call for poor households to be given direct
access to resources, such as land, to produce their own basic food requirements,
and for government to strengthen and improve social services and the
social security system in chronic poverty-affected areas.
View
South Africa's Mail & Guardian coverage of this story at http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=14231&t=1
View
the BBC's coverage of this story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3024021.stm
Watch
and listen to Democracy Now TV's reporting of this story at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/14/1529241
Read
the coverage of this story bythe UN Integrated Regional Information
Network at http://www.irinnews.org/Report.asp?ReportID=34103
Listen
to Voice of America's interview with Dr. de Swardt at http://www.voanews.com/EnglishtoAfrica/article.cfm?ObjectID=991CFCA9-5611-4019-92F71DEB1FE6205A
This story
was also covered in Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper, on US Pacifica Radio,
and on South Africa's SAFM
Notes to
Editors
For more information, or to arrange an interview with Dr. de Swardt,
contact Sally Gainsbury, id21 Research Editor, on +44 (0) 1273 877305,
or s.gainsbury@ids.ac.uk
id21 Insights 46 'Escaping
Poverty: Can Policy Reach the Chronically Poor?' which highlights the
latest research on chronic poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America
can be found online at http://www.id21.org/insights/insights46/index.html
Cobus de Swadt's and Andries
du Toit's article 'Staying Poor in South Africa' can be found on id21's
website at http://www.id21.org/insights/insights46/insights-iss46-art03.html
. As with all id21 articles, the piece may be freely reproduced, provided
id21 and the original authors are acknowledged. Kindly inform Sally
Gainsbury if you intend to reproduce any id21 articles.
More information on the chronic
poverty in developing countries can be found on the Chronic Poverty
Research Centre's website:
http://www.chronicpoverty.org/
- ENDS
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Views expressed on these pages are not necessarily
those of DFID, IDS, id21 or other contributing institutions. Unless
stated otherwise articles featured on the id21 web-site may be
copied or quoted without restriction, provided id21 and originating
author(s) and institution(s) are acknowledged.
Copyright
© 2003 id21. All rights reserved.
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