by Kallie Szczepanski

Created on: April 16, 2008

A handful of black South African multi-millionaires now cruise the streets of Cape Town and Soweto in Porches and Lamborghinis, and the middle class is growing. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the overall distribution of wealth is still divided along racial lines, and for some of the poorest of the poor, times are even harder now than they were under white minority rule. The top 20% of families make 60% of the money in South Africa. The bottom half of families take home only 15% of the wealth.

Fourteen years after the fall of the apartheid system in South Africa, the country is a study in contrasts.

Take, for example, unemployment statistics, an important indicator of poverty. The unemployment rate for black South Africans is 41.2%, among the worst in all of Africa. White South Africans have an unemployment rate of 5.1%, among the best in the developed world. 17.1% of South Africans of Indian descent are out of work, while 19.8% of the mixed-race or "colored" population is unemployed.

Even more significant, in terms of hope for the future, 51.4% of youths aged 16 to 24 are unemployed. That means that once young people graduate or drop out of school, more than half of them are unable to find work. Many of these young people turn to black-market activities, such as the drug trade or prostitution, or support themselves through robbery and violent crime. South Africa is losing the next generation of workers and leaders, while the very wealthy fear for their property and lives in the face of one of the world's worst epidemics of serious crime.

More facts about inequality in South Africa:

The average black worker makes 12,000 rand per year ($1525 US). A white worker averages 65,400 rand ($8,270 US).

About 71% of white South Africans have at least a high school education. 22% of blacks have finished high school.

18% of black households have running water, while 87% of white households do.

95% of white families have a telephone, and 46% own a computer. For black families, 31% have a phone, and less than 2% have a computer.

When Nelson Mandela led the peaceful transition to black majority rule in 1994, most South Africans and foreign observers alike hoped for swift and sure progress toward equality for all.

Today, however, many black families scrape by on $3 US or less per day. They struggle to scrape together the $25 yearly school fees for their children. Even if they come up with the money, often the kids have to go to class hungry, so it's hard for them to learn.
The scourge of HIV/AIDS also afflicts poor communities disproportionately. Many men have been forced to leave home to find work in mines or on large farms far from their families. When they return home to their wives, sometimes they bring HIV with them. The poverty stricken population has no access to effective anti-retroviral treatments unless a local government clinic provides the drugs for free. Until recently, President Thabo Mbeki bizarrely denied that AIDS was caused by the HIV virus, limiting the availability of treatment for those who depended on the government for help.

For the poorest black South Africans, perhaps the cruelest irony of all is that their lives are no better now than they were in 1994. Sometimes, dashed hopes are even more devastating than outright hopelessness.

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