Daniel Brownell
SOC 110
I was born in Cape Town, South Africa and lived there from 1983-1986, Hawaii from 1986-92, Cape Town again 1992-2000. I then moved to live with my dad in Laguna Hills, California, for a year and a half of high school (to gain residency) before coming to Cal Poly. I’ve been back to visit my mother and friends twice since leaving in 2000. The purpose of this essay is to choose two nations on the opposite ends of the economic spectrum, and show how their social stratification differs. I have therefore chosen South Africa and the United States to compare, and offer my opinions based mainly on my Cape Town experiences, which accounts for the limited title. I have only experienced California from a biased suburban perspective, and would not want to extrapolate Orange County to be representative of the United States.
Within the United States,
there appears to be an income and occupational inequality between richer Whites
(82.3% of U.S. population), and poorer Hispanics (11.2%) and Blacks (12.9%),
which according to Joan Ferrante’s Sociology book make up 106.4% of the
US population (Table 8.5, p254). The
CIA’s factbook doesn’t even have a separate listing for Hispanic, because “the
US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent
(including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US
who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)” So are those 11.2% now divided between white
and ‘other’? Statistics can be
interesting.
Ferrante’s graph for US
income distribution is actually quite impressively skewed positively towards
middle-class and upper-middle-class income.
The CIA’s world factbook claims the per capita income of a US resident
is $36,300 compared to a $10,000 per capita income in South Africa. But I’ll bet if RSA income distribution was
graphed, we’d see that $10,000 comes from adding up rich white peoples’ money
and dividing by the large black and coloured population. $10,000 is enough to live well for a year in
South Africa. My mother and I lived off
roughly this amount in a nice apartment across the road from the beach. Ferrante says “the United States is
classlike in the sense that every occupation contains people of different
ethnic, racial, age, and sex groups.
Nevertheless, some ethnic, racial, age, and sex groups are clearly
concentrated in the low-status occupations” (p.271). But the situation in South Africa is much more black and white
(no pun intended?). The disparity in
income is much more pronounced and visible to all.
I returned to South Africa
when I was 8 years old, in 1992. The
rand was at about R3.50/dollar. Nelson
Mandela had been released from his 27 years on Robben Island, and the National
Party was taking the steps towards a truly democratic election process in
1994. When April 26-29th
came around, there were lines like apathetic American voters might not
believe. I remember seeing aerial
photographs of black areas where tens of thousands lined up for their chance to
contribute to the ending of apartheid.
I remember people of all colours in lines through the streets of Sea
Point, all of them knowing the ANC would win.
The question was whether they would have a 2/3rds majority. The ANC won 62.6% of the vote, and the NP
took roughly 20%. South Africa became a
new ‘rainbow nation’ with a Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the NP
irreversibly changed their name to the NNP, the ‘new’ national party. The Truth and Reconciliation commission was
established upon the basis of the “Promotion of National Unity and
Reconciliation Act of 1995” to facilitate a national catharsis of the evils
occurred under the old government.
Politically, apartheid had been ended.
But anyone who goes there today knows that the society is still stratified, and it will still be a long time before equality is truly realized, if it ever is. The direction towards an improved education system, basic health-care services and adequate housing, at least, has been established. Perhaps we can say that the rand’s steady devaluation since the new government’s inception to R14/dollar in early 2002 was necessary to fund social programs to improve these issues, but this is a complicated matter, and I don’t know the details. Since early 2002, the rand has worked its way back up to R6.50/dollar. Impressive.
South African society is
composed of several categories of racial groups. The simplest categorization is white, coloured and black. Of course, each of these groups is comprised
of sub-categorizations, such as Afrikaaner and non-Afrikaaner whites, Malay or
Indian coloureds, and the dozens of tribal ancestries of blacks. People are people though, and personally I
was never even aware of the distinction made in Joan Ferrante’s Sociology book
of ‘Indian’ as a group separate from ‘Coloured’ (being of a slightly more
upwardly mobile group, and apparently being from India), which goes to show
either my own ignorance, or the meaning of Marx’s belief “that the number of
classes to be defined depends on the reason why we want to define them” (p
263).
Cape Town’s current social
stratification is made visible and understood by its geographic
demographics. Brightly painted Camps
Bay and Clifton mansions overlook the Atlantic Ocean behind Table Mountain. Except for a few exceptions, which I have
never seen, the only black people living there are live-in maids and
gardeners. As we circumnavigate ‘Town’,
around the stretch from Lion’s Head to Signal Hill, we see the suburbs Sea
Point, Green Point and Mouille Point.
Cape Town’s main industry is tourism, and this stretch would be the most
likely place for visitors to stay.
Housing is more concentrated, in blocks of flats and sky-rising
apartment buildings. Residents are
predominantly white, but it is not nearly as obvious, since people of all colours
populate the streets in rather equal proportions. Public transportation in the form of buses and combi taxi’s is
performed almost entirely by coloured and black drivers, and with a
capitalistic enthusiasm and efficiency to be admired.
As we enter ‘town’, with its
central business district (CBD), we see that all groups are represented. Along the streets of business and commercial
buildings, black and coloured vendors operate in active flea markets. Street children will ask you for money. Black car guards will watch your car, and
expect a tip when you return. There is
a lot of opportunity to be charitable or just to spend money, and on a daily
basis, these interactions account for most of a privileged white person’s
personal cognition of the stratification.
It’s hard to help the world, so you try one person at a time. It takes a noble type to try improve the
larger system, and I’m not sure how to go about doing that. The black street people (‘bergies’) often
notice my dreads and say ‘I Rasta’ and smile and try to sell me ganja. I help them out when I can.
As we move behind Table
Mountain, along one track, we find white communities like Constantia, and
Claremont, and mixed communities like Rondebosch and Bishops’ court. Along another track, towards the ‘Cape
flats’, we find large coloured communities in areas like Goodwood and Maitland,
and large black townships like Langa, Guguletu and Khayelitcha. These areas, quite far from the CBD are
where the bulk of Cape Town’s population lives, and here there is room for the
greatest improvement.
Currently there is a catch
22 situation: poverty and vast unemployment cause crime. But to create money to fix the poverty,
South Africa’s biggest hope is foreign investors, which are disturbed mainly by
the crime problems. Read an online
South African newspaper. You’ll be
shocked at the crime stories. Another
key variable is the lack of skilled labour (along with the obvious unemployment
of unskilled labour problem). Some say
that whites are leaving the country, because of high tax rates and crime, and
fear that South Africa’s economy will go the same route as Zimbabwe’s. Another pressing concern is AIDS, which is
rampant among the black township populations.
It is expensive to provide HIV-suppressing antiretroviral medication to
a lot of people.
I think South Africa has lots of potential to improve its economy, and seems to have gotten its act together since the currency low in 2002. Entrepreneurship can be rewarding. Cellular phones took off, for example. In some regions cell phones are being distributed instead of ever setting up land lines. Superior technologies can be distributed without having to destroy infrastructure, and I think communication and information technology will continue to improve and become a large attractor of foreign money. In conclusion, I just want to make some dollars and go back there and live like a king.