SA economic achievements negated by high levels of inequality

The Gini co-efficient, an internationally used measure of income inequality,  stood at 0.70 in 2008, the highest in the world, indicating that inequality has been increasing since the fall of apartheid, said the report.
The top 10 percent of the population accounted for 58 percent of South Africa’s income, while the bottom 10 percent accounted for just 0.5 percent of income, and the bottom 50 percent less than eight percent, according to the report. The report points to two factors, which are at the heart of the inequality problem.
The economy’s inability to generate sufficient jobs. Low employment growth is the result of a host of demand and supply factors, including modest economic growth with production increasingly skewed toward capital and skill -intensive modes; a labour market characterised by downward rigidities in real wages, in part due to labour regulation and union power, and low levels of quality education, entrepreneurship and skills, the report explains.
The country’s unemployment rate of 25.2 percent (or 33 percent if discouraged workers were included) was among the world’s highest.
Spatial patterns, which have perpetuated the apartheid-era’s divisions and exclusion. In these patterns, black townships and informal settlements and former homelands are home to almost 40 percent of South Africans, and a much higher share of the unemployed. — Xinhua.