Skip to content

The state of the people: Citizens, civil society and governance in South Africa, 1994-2000

Literature › Works

Bert Klandermans; Marlene Roefs; Johan Olivier (eds.); Tom Lodge (ch. 1); Hennie Kotzé (ch. 6, with) (2001). The state of the people: Citizens, civil society and governance in South Africa, 1994-2000. Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC Press), Pretoria.
Type book
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method survey fieldwork
Period studied 1994–2000
Regions South Africa, Gauteng, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, Northern Province
Themes transition post apartheid, inequality poverty unemployment, politics ideology elections, resistance social movements, demography urbanisation, macro fiscal finance debt, labour markets wages, unions strikes, education human capital, methods data sources
Citation key klandermans2001a

Argument

Drawing on a seven-wave panel-style survey programme (HSRC Social Movements Project, 1994-2000), the editors ask whether the transition to democracy improved the 'state of the people'. They find that apartheid-era inequality remained largely intact, but that race was gradually giving way to education, class and centre/periphery location as determinants of income and grievance. Grievances arise more from social comparison and expectations of the future than from objective conditions, and trust in government is tied to optimism, ANC support and civil society involvement. Civil society and peaceful protest did not demobilise, while electoral and party engagement declined, and a 'dual identity' (subgroup plus national) is argued to be politically healthy. Lodge's opening chapter supplies context on social structure, local-government fiscal crisis and the RDP-to-GEAR shift.

Evidence and method

Annual national sample surveys 1994-2000 (about 2,200 respondents per wave, per ch. 8; fieldwork details in an Appendix not included in the text supplied), analysed through OLS and hierarchical regression, correlations and eta statistics. Chapter 1 uses official statistics (Statistics South Africa, 1996 census, SAIRR, Hirschowitz), press reports, a 1995 HSRC local-government survey, and interviews with officials of six Gauteng civics (June-July 2000).

Findings

  • Unemployment stayed high and racially skewed, with the rate for Blacks rising towards 1995-96 levels by 2000. (p. 28)

    Nationally, the level of unemployment hovered around 25% during the seven-year period from 1994 to 2000

  • Black incomes rose faster than white, narrowing but not eliminating the gap. (p. 30)

    in 1994, 3% of the Blacks earned an income of over R4 000, as compared to 13.5% of the Coloureds, 42% of the Asians, and no less than 78% of the Whites

  • Race's explanatory weight for income fell sharply, so that education overtook it. (p. 44)

    Whereas in 1994 the ß for race was .48 it changed to .27 in 2000 after a steady decline over the years.

  • Youth unemployment is the key burden; higher education gave young people little protection. (p. 35)

    the younger one is, the less education makes a difference in terms of unemployment.

  • The centre-periphery divide (Gauteng/Western Cape vs. other provinces) widened, notably in unemployment in 2000. (p. 38)

    In other words, in one year's time the gap grew three times wider: 12.9% instead of 4%.

  • Grievance formation depends more on comparison than on objective position. (p. 71)

    grievance formation was more dependent on subjective evaluation than on objective conditions. Feeling disadvantaged was more important than being disadvantaged.

  • Personal grievance shifted from race to class (living standard). (p. 59)

    Grievances came to be determined by what people had and no longer by who they were.

  • Little evidence of demobilisation of civil society despite the fall in party membership. (p. 118)

  • Trust in government is forward-looking, tied to expectations of the future, and fell to a low in 1998. (p. 152)

    Of the three measures of relative deprivation, expectations of the future were consistently the most important determinant, the only exception being the year 1994.

  • Lodge documents the post-1994 municipal fiscal crisis from incorporating indebted townships into former white councils. (p. 13)

    The incorporation of badly indebted townships into former “white” councils and the decline in central government funding for support services in the townships soon resulted in a fiscal crisis.

  • GEAR's design and the departure from RDP-style redistribution, as characterised by critics. (p. 20)

    through viewing job creation in the private sector rather than Keynesian public expenditure as the “primary source of income distribution”, GEAR appeared to favour growth concerns

  • Demographic and labour-market shifts: formal employment fell while informal rose; large farm-worker exodus. (p. 3)

    since 1993, 500 000 farm workers left commercial farms to seek work elsewhere, taking with them 5 million dependents.