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| Title: | The 'Politics of Poverty' in a Post-Apartheid South African Metropolis |
| Author: | Naidoo, Kamila |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | African Sociological Review (ISSN 1027-4332) |
| Volume: | 9 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 55-78 |
| Language: | English |
| Notes: | biblio. refs. |
| Geographic terms: | South Africa Southern Africa |
| Subjects: | poverty economic inequality Urbanization and Migration Economics and Trade Politics and Government sociology South Africa--Economic conditions South Africa--Social conditions Post-apartheid era |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/afrisocirevi.9.2.55 |
| Abstract: | South Africa is currently experiencing high levels of poverty and widening gaps between the wealthy and poor of all racial groups. This paper offers comparative data on poverty and vulnerability as they affect people in four selected, historically racially demarcated areas of Pretoria, South Africa, and assesses the changing politics and assimilating conditions of deep poverty that are acting to connect the poor across racial divides. The selected areas include Danville, a white working class area; Eersterust, Pretoria's only 'coloured' township; Laudium, where Indian poor live in the 'White Blocks' area; and Soshanguve, a historically black area. A questionnaire survey with household and individual sections was carried out in the four areas in 2003. This was followed by in-depth qualitative interviews in the poorest sectors of all areas in 2004. The empirical work reveals that only small proportions of people in the four areas consider their material circumstances to have improved over the past decade, with large numbers of people claiming that their lives have become worse. They blame middle-of-the-road policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that have led to the sustaining of high unemployment, inadequate redistributive mechanisms and the reduction of the poor's share in the national income. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
