![]() ![]() Ramaphosa’s own experience is an extreme example. So, if you took the income of a typical black citizen, it would be closer to that of a white citizen.īut inequalities within these groups increased dramatically. The nature of economic inequality in South Africa also changed.ĭifferences between the major population groups declined. In many areas of the lives of South Africans, the indignities of racial exclusion became a thing of the past. ![]() Piped water and electricity became available to many more families. Legally-imposed racial separation of schools and healthcare was ended. The abolition of apartheid and the transition to a democratic political system led to some clear economic gains for the black population. In 1994, South Africa’s first democratic election made Mandela president. Eventually, the government conceded defeat, releasing Mandela from prison.ĭemocracy, bringing the same legal rights, including voting, to people of all races, came late to South Africa. ![]() Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress (now South Africa’s largest political party), which had been banned, was serving a life sentence in prison.Īs leader of the mineworkers’ union, Ramaphosa was part of a wave of strikes and community protests in the mid- and late-1980s that convinced many white business owners that apartheid had to go. Resistance to apartheid was brutally repressed. It had been stuck at this level for at least 50 years. But the income per capita of black South African families in the late 1980s was around 11% of that of white families. They owned the mines, factories and farms that made South Africa the richest country on the continent, and some had achieved levels of affluence similar to that seen in the richest countries in the world. Under apartheid, the white minority prospered. In 2012, the year Ramaphosa became deputy president of South Africa, he had become the 29th-richest person in Africa, owning wealth of more than $700 million. When Cyril Ramaphosa, who in 2018 became the president of South Africa, was born in 1952, under the apartheid system of racial segregation he was excluded from the best schools, healthcare, and even public bathrooms. Democracy brought greater political equality among the citizens of many of the countries that adopted it, and usually had some mitigating effect on economic inequality.In many countries, unequal access to growing affluence led to social unrest and demands for a new political system: democracy.The capitalist revolution has also been accompanied by unprecedented global economic inequalities, and growing threats to our natural environment.These three factors dramatically raised the amount that could be produced in a day’s work. It brought about advances in technology, increasing specialization, and massive increases in productive assets-capital. The capitalist revolution made the escape from poverty possible.At around the same time as the escape from poverty began, a new force was beginning to dominate the economy: capitalism.A minority of countries have achieved affluence, while a significant majority of the world’s population has at least escaped from grinding poverty. In the past 250 years there has been an unprecedented rise in global living standards.1 Capitalism and democracy: Affluence, inequality, and the environment 1.1 Introduction ![]()
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