inequality

The South African Council of Churches (SACC) says it plans to tackle the challenges and imbalances in the country through a campaign called ‘The South Africa We Pray For’‚ stating that research it commissioned shows that inequality today is far greater than it was at the end of apartheid.

The organisations says that this prayer and action campaign‚ to be launched at a special Reconciliation Day service on 16 December 2015‚ will see the church taking an active role in addressing the societal imbalances currently experienced in a post-apartheid South Africa.

Gauteng MEC of Economic Development, Lebogang Maile, says the country's large inequality gap is what contributes to criminality in townships.

In an interview with the Mail & Guardian, Maile, said inequality reflected more than just unemployment and the wealth gap but led to deep social issues such as drug use, alcoholism, teen pregnancy and criminality.

The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) believes economic inequality as the driving force behind recent violence’s in Soweto.

SAIRR head of media and public affairs, Mienke Steytler, believes economic inequality as the driving force behind recent violence in South Africa.

In the past week, residents in Soweto, Kagiso and Diepsloot looted shops owned by foreign nationals within the community. The police are calling it criminal acts while some say the attacks are xenophobic.

According to Jay Naidoo, chairperson of GAIN, a global foundation fighting malnutrition in the world, the inequality gap is not decreasing but becoming more pronounced.
 
Naidoo, who also served as a general secretary of the Congress of the South African Trade Unions and also as a minister in the Nelson Mandela administration, argues that now the super-rich are sitting with an even more dramatic level of control, while the rest of the world languishes in a worsening condition of serfdom.
 

Oxfam says wealth accumulated by the richest one percent will exceed that of the other 99 percent in 2016.
 
Speaking head of the annual meeting of the world's most powerful at Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam executive director, Winnie Byanyima, points out that, “The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast.”
 

According to a report released by several international civil society organisations (CSOs), the private sector involvement in education in Africa creates inequalities among pupils.
 
In a joint statement, the organisations state that, “Privatisation policies increase inequality in access, do not guarantee quality and undermine the notion of education as a public good,” furthermore, “Increased private sector participation in education is a strong driver of segregation and inequalities of opportunities.”
 

Small Business Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu, has warned that people will rise up if there is no change in the levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty in South Africa.

Speaking at the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry conference in Johannesburg, Zulu pointed out that, "When the people that have been struggling for many, many years find that the gap between the poor and the rich keeps on expanding, one day they will get up and say enough is enough…”