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determine social and economic policy. The formal political representatives
and institutions would maintain and advance freedom not only
by empowering those who lack power (which requires effective ‘service
delivery’), but also enabling a polity in which the representatives of all
groups are given equal access to those that rule, in particular to those
that determine macro-economic policy.
This is very far from the case in South Africa. At least one third
of the population is either unemployed or no longer economically
active (either as a consequence of illness, age and disability or because
they are discouraged workers). The number of South African’s unemployed
stands at 4.3 million, or a formal unemployment rate of 25.3%;
the number of economically inactive workers stands at a staggering
14.35 million (with actively discouraged work-seekers comprising just
under 2 million of this total); so even if we only consider the actively
discouraged work-seekers and the formally unemployed, we have a
real unemployment rate of approximately 37% of the population. [36] If
this percentage is combined with that proportion of the population
that is involved in menial and underpaid jobs (quintiles two and three,
see footnote below), most of whose representatives give them little or
no meaningful means of criticising macro-economic decision-making
since they fall under a set of trade unions whose umbrella body is in a
ruling alliance with the ANC, and if we assume that the unemployed
household heads occupy the lowest quintile, on a conservative estimate
a staggering figure of 77% of South Africa’s population has little
or no meaningful representation. [37] This large group is a relatively
homogeneous group – in the apartheid era categorizations that are
145
FREEDOM, POWER AND
REPRESENTATION
Lawrence Hamilton
36
‘Labour Force Survey 2009’ in Statistics South Africa Quarterly Labour Force Survey
Quarter 2, 2010 at http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02112ndQuarter2010.
pdf .
37
There are five quintiles of household head income. The three lower quintiles include all
those with an income of R30 000 ($4000) per annum or less; 72.5% of the ‘black’ population,
44% of the ‘coloured’ population, 15% of the ‘indian’ population and 3% of the ‘white’
population are situated within these lowest three quintiles, so given the demographics
of South Africa the lower three quintiles comprise 55% of the population earning a
monetary income. The figure of 77% is reached by adding together the real proportion
of the population that is unemployed (37%) and the percentage of the population that is
employed but occupy quintiles two and three (40%). Statistics South Africa .2009. Income
and expenditure of households 2005/2006. http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0100/
P01002005.pdf .