Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T10:03:16.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The black middle class and democracy in South Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2014

Roger Southall
Roger Southall*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa
*
Email: roger.southall@wits.ac.za
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Against the background of celebrations about the rise of a middle class in Africa and its widely posited role in promoting democracy, this paper explores the politics of the black middle class in South Africa. It does so by examining three propositions: first, that the black middle class was a positive force in the struggle for liberation and democracy; second, that post-1994 strategies of the African National Congress (ANC) government which have benefited it secure its political alignment with the ANC's ‘party-state’; and third, that its growth and increasing diversity will contribute to the consolidation of democracy. The conclusion drawn is that while the black middle class may indeed play an important role in furthering democracy, its political orientations and behaviour cannot be assumed to be inherently progressive.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 647 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this article was presented as a Van Zyl Slabbert public lecture at the University of Cape Town in November 2013.

References

REFERENCES

African Development Bank. 2011. ‘The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa’.Google Scholar
Claassen, C. 2011. ‘Africa's burgeoning middle class: The rise of the plebians’, www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view&id=792:africas-burgeoning-middle-class-therise-of-the-plebians&catid=90:pti.Google Scholar
Crankshaw, O. 2002. Race, Class and the Changing Division of Labour under Apartheid. Oxford: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Deloitte on Africa. 2013. ‘Rise and Rise of African Middle Class’. www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-SouthAfrica/local%20Assets/Documents,rise-and-rise.Google Scholar
Dreyer, L. 1987. The Modern African Elite of South Africa. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Eidelberg, P. 1999. ‘Guerrilla warfare and the decline of urban apartheid: the shaping of a new African middle class and the transformation of the African National Congress (1975–1985)’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East XIX, 1: 51–65.Google Scholar
Everatt, D. 2012. ‘Class, Race and Politics in South Africa Today’, (mimeo). July.Google Scholar
Fletcher, P. 2013. ‘Africa's emerging middle class drives growth and democracy’, www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/10/us-africa-investemnt-idUSBRE9490DV20130510.Google Scholar
Hart, G. 2007. ‘Changing concepts of articulation: political stakes in South Africa today’, Review of African Political Economy, 111: 85–101.Google Scholar
Hunter, M. 2010. ‘Racial desegregation and schooling in South Africa: contested geographies of class formation’, Environment and Planning A 42: 2640–57.Google Scholar
Jolobe, Z. 2014. ‘The Democratic Alliance election campaign: ‘Ayisafani’?’, in Schulz-Herzenberg, C. & Southall, R., eds. Election 2014 South Africa: the campaigns, results and future prospects. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 57–71.Google Scholar
Kane-Berman, J. 1991. South Africa's Silent Revolution. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Levitsky, S. & Way, L.. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: hybrid regimes after the cold war. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Limb, P. 2010. The ANC's Early Years: nation, class and place in South Africa before 1940. Pretoria: UNISA Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, S.M. 1959a. ‘Some social requisites of democracy: economic development and political legitimacy’, American Political Science Review 53, 1: 69–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipset, S.M. 1959b. Political Man. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Mail & Guardian. 2013. “Know your DA’ campaign: we are committed to BEE’, 9 September, mg.co.za/article/2013-09-09-da-launches-second-phase-of-know-your-da-campaign.Google Scholar
Marrian, N. 2013. ‘ANC defends Zuma's appeal to middle class vote’, BDlive, 1 October, www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2013/10/01anc-defends-sumas-appeal-to-middle-class-vote.Google Scholar
Mattes, R. forthcoming. ‘South Africa's Emerging Black Middle Class‘.Google Scholar
McKaiser, E. 2014. ‘My head may say DA, but tell that to my heart’, Sunday Times, 2 February.Google Scholar
Melber, H. 2013. ‘Africa and the Middle Class(es)’, Africa Spectrum 3: 111–20.Google Scholar
Merten, M. 2013. ‘Election crucial for ANC’, Daily News, 1 November.Google Scholar
Moore, B. 1966. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Mthembu, B. 2013. ‘Black middle class can't support Zuma-led ANC’, Times Live, www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/10/03/black-middle-class-can-t-support-zuma-led-anc.Google Scholar
Munusamy, R. 2013. ‘Jacob's ladder: the middle class conundrum’, Daily Maverick, 11 November. www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-10-02-jacobs-ladder-the-middle-class-conundrum/#.UoCNJHAjwuc.Google Scholar
Ngoma, A. 2014. ‘Loosening ties? Black professionals and the ANC in the 2014 election’, in Schulz-Herzenberg, C. & Southall, R., eds. Election 2014 South Africa: the campaigns, results and future prospects. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 155–68.Google Scholar
Robinson, J. 2014. ‘The economic freedom fighters: birth of a giant?’ in Schulz-Herzenberg, C. & Southall, R., eds. Election 2014 South Africa: the campaigns, results and future prospects. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 72–88.Google Scholar
Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E. & Stephens, J.. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
SAIRR (South African Institute of Race Relations). 1971. A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1971. Johannesburg: SAIRR.Google Scholar
SAIRR. 1989/90. Race Relations Survey 1988/89. Johannesburg: SAIRR.Google Scholar
SAIRR. 2010/2011. Race Relations Survey 2010/2011. Johannesburg: SAIRR.Google Scholar
SAIRR. 2012. Race Relations Survey 2012. Johannesburg: SAIRR.Google Scholar
Schlemmer, L. (2005) ‘Lost in transformation? South Africa's emerging African middle class’, CDE Focus, 8 August. Johannesburg: Centre for Development Enterprise.Google Scholar
Schulz-Herzenberg, C. 2009. ‘Towards a Silent Revolution? South African voters during the first years of democracy 1994–2009’. PhD thesis in Political Science, University of Cape Town.Google Scholar
Seekings, J. & Nattrass, N.. 2006. Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.Google Scholar
Southall, R. 2005. ‘Political change and the black middle class in democratic South Africa’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 38, 3: 521–42.Google Scholar
Southall, R. 2013a. Liberation Movements in Power: party and state in Southern Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.Google Scholar
Southall, R. 2013b. ‘The power elite in democratic South Africa: race and class in a fractured society’, in Daniel, J., Naidoo, P., Pillay, D. & Southall, R. (eds), New South African Review 3: The Second Phase – Tragedy or Farce? Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 17–38.Google Scholar
Southall, R. 2014. ‘Exit, Voice and Loyalty: the middle classes and democracy in South Africa’. Unpublished report to Centre for Development Enterprise, Johannesburg.Google Scholar
Southall, R. Forthcoming. ‘The African middle class in South Africa 1910–1994’, Economic History of Developing Regions.Google Scholar
Therborn, G. 2012. ‘Class in the 21st century’, New Left Review 78: 5–30.Google Scholar
UCT Unilever Institute for Strategic Marketing. 2013. ‘4 million and rising: Black middle class expanding’, www.unileverinstitute.co.za.Google Scholar
UHY International. 2013. ‘The world's fastest-growing middle class’, www.uhy.com/the-worlds-fastest-growing-middle-class.Google Scholar
Vigne, R. & Lipton, M.. 2014. ‘Racial redress is not inimical to liberalism, but part of it’, Business Day, 5 February, www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2014/02/05/racial-redress-is-not-inimical-to-liberalism-but-part-of-it.Google Scholar
Visagie, J. & Posel, D.. 2013. ‘The development of the middle class in post-apartheid society’, Journal of Development Studies, 30, 2, 819–31.Google Scholar
Vogt, S. 2011. ‘Globalisation from the Bottom Up – The Aspiring Middle Classes in Emerging Economies’, Konrad Adenauer Foundation International Reports 12/11: 6–24.Google Scholar
Wederman, A. 2012. ‘Not in my backyard! Middle class protest in China’, paper to conference on ‘Middle Class Phenomenon in Emerging Markets 2013: Multi-Disciplinary and Multi-Country Perspectives’, Georgia State University, 26–28 September.Google Scholar
Wright, E.O. 1982. ‘Class boundaries and contradictory class locations’, in Giddens, A. & Held, D. (eds), Class, Power and Conflict: classical and contemporary debates. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 112–29.Google Scholar
Zibi, S. 2013. ‘Can Agang change the game?’, Financial Mail, 21 June, www.financialmail.co.za/fm/CoverStory/.../can-agang-change-the-game.Google Scholar