Newsletter| The black middle class more than doubled in size from 2.2 million in 1993 to 5.4 million in 2008. But has it created the expected knock-on effects on growing spending power, a better educated and trained workforce and more investment?
This has been Teboho Maluleka’s* routine since he began working as an intern in 2014.
Maluleka’s life can be overlaid against South Africa’s economic and political policies intended to create the black South African middle class.It outgrew that of whites in 2014 and, by 2018, it had grown to 6 million individuals, according to the ANC’s January 8 statement that year. Maluleka’s life can be overlaid against South Africa’s economic and political policies intended to create the black South African middle class.
Maluleka was three years old in 1994. He and his elder brother were raised by both his working-class parents in Dobsonville, Soweto. A classic black middle-class family: Oratilwe, Thabo, Nicole and Kgopotso Ramokgopa. PHOTO: Getty Images/iStockphoto Gear’s target was to achieve an annual GDP growth rate of 6% and the creation of 400 000 jobs a year by the year 2000.Gear modelling was flawed and was based on dubious, ideologically laden assumptions and improbable projections about how private investors and exporters would respond to the policies, says Gqubule.
Maluleka studied economics and journalism at university, thanks to an academic scholarship from the department of higher education.UCT professor and director of the Democracy in Africa Research Unit, Robert Mattes, writes that the growth of the black middle class was driven by legislative changes regarding education, employment equity and black economic empowerment.
Government efforts to build a black middle class required affirmative action in public service hiring, and in the private sector by setting demographic employment benchmarks, targets and time frames. Middle class coloured households increased from 41% between 1998 and 2000 to 48% between 2004 and 2006.
Between December 2008 and March 2010, the economy shed almost one million jobs as employment fell to 13.8 million from 14.8 million.
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