South Africa Faces Up to ‘Wage Apartheid’
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Whites in South Africa earn five times more than their black counterparts on average, according to a new study, illustrating the enduring legacy of apartheid 14 years after its abolition.
A study done for the UASA union made waves in the Rainbow Nation last week when it showed that whites bring home 450 percent more than blacks on average and 400 percent more than their mixed race peers.
In line with the global trend, education is the single biggest determinant of earning power, it concluded, but in a country with South Africa’s history the issue has a powerful racial dimension.
“That blacks weren’t allowed on to certain beaches (during the apartheid era of whites-only rule) can be changed overnight but education has a long-lasting legacy,” said the author of the research, economist Mike Schussler.
“My concern is that our current education system hasn’t overcome that legacy so we are going to be stuck with the problems for a while longer.”
Under apartheid, says Marius Roodt, researcher at the South African Institute for Race Relations, whites had access to “near world class” schools and universities.
On the other hand, “African people were seen as unworthy of an education and 14 years isn’t going to be enough to address that,” he told AFP.
This hangover has been tackled from an economic point of view—resources for schools are now equally distributed between historically white and historically black institutions.
“Funding is pretty equal across the spectrum. The difference now lies in the fact that historically black schools are performing dismally,” says Servaas Van der Berg, an economist and wage specialist from South Africa’s University of Stellenbosch.
Underachievement can be ascribed to the lower quality of teachers in the mainly black townships as well as social issues related to attitudes to education.
Research in other countries has shown that parental achievement is critical—a child of parents who went to university is more likely to stay in the education system longer and gain a degree.
Van der Berg underlines that other factors should be taken into account when looking at current wage distribution patterns in South Africa, which reflect the racially divided past but are not necessarily indicative of discrimination today.
Whites are concentrated in urban areas, where wages are higher and skilled employment and the services industry are more prevalent. Blacks dominate agricultural, rural areas.
“During apartheid the ideology was that blacks were unnecessary in urban areas and they were supposed to go back to their homelands,” he explains.
Another factor affecting the disparity in earnings is statistical—due to differing birth and death rates, the white population is on average older, and therefore richer, than the black population.
One of the most comprehensive studies of the labour market was published by specialists Rulof Burger and Rachel Jafta in 2006 called “Returns to Race: Labour Market Discrimination in Post-Apartheid South Africa.”
It concluded that wages were no longer determined by simple race discrimination—blacks being overlooked or worse paid for jobs because of their skin colour—but were mostly influenced by educational attainment.
“There appears to have been a shift away from ‘pure discrimination’ and towards differential returns to eduation,” the study concluded.
Burger explained to AFP that on average a white worker completes more years of education than the average black worker—12.6 years as opposed to 8.8—who also “still receives an education of inferior quality.”
“This is a remnant of the apartheid legacy which the department of education has so far been unable to rectify,” Burger says, adding the unemployment rate for blacks is five times higher than that of whites.
Policy responses to the economic inequality caused by the apartheid system have centred on increasing funding for black schools, affirmative action and land redistribution.
Burger and Jafta found affirmative action had led to a narrowing of wage differences for the top, most highly paid jobs, but had “had no observable effect on the racial employment gap.”
The key therefore to achieving a more equal distribution of wages among the white, black and mixed race population is harmonising education standards across the country, say commentators.
But this most vital of objectives is far from being achieved.
“Former white schools are still pretty good but we still see in African townships that schools are dysfunctional,” said Roodt.
Schussler agrees, saying: “We are spending a lot on education and we’re just not getting the results we need.”
(Posted on May 13, 2008)
Comments
Schussler agrees, saying: “We are spending a lot on education and we’re just not getting the results we need.”
I heard somewhere that Conservatives think that civil rights means equal opportunity, but Liberals believe that civil rights means equal results!
Posted by at 6:45 PM on May 13
“parental achievement is critical—a child of parents who went to university is more likely to stay in the education system longer and gain a degree.”
That’s true, and a greyhound dog whose mother won dog races is more likely to win dog races than is a poodle whose mother didn’t win dog races.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 7:07 PM on May 13
“Former white schools are still pretty good but we still see in African townships that schools are dysfunctional,” said Roodt.
Schussler agrees, saying: “We are spending a lot on education and we’re just not getting the results we need.”
Check back in a few hundred years, after interbreeding has merged all the races into one. Maybe then you’ll find results that you are happy with.
Posted by at 7:12 PM on May 13
No big surprise here. Roughly 30 million blacks here in the States are suffering from the legacy of Apartheid, too. Imagine how intense the effects must be right there in South Africa!
Posted by Svigor at 7:13 PM on May 13
“Whites in South Africa earn five times more than their black counterparts.”
But a counterpart is “one that closely resembles another.” Only later do we find that the white urban executive has 13 years of schooling and is “much older” than his “counterpart,” who happens to be a young black reefer smoking male who barely passed the eighth grade and makes his living as a rural subsistence farmer scratching roots out of the ground, while eating the seed corn.
A Counterpart?
Notice also that Schussler blames the wage gap on apartheid when he knows that it’s pure genetics:
“Research in other countries has shown that parental achievement is critical — a child of parents who went to university is more likely to stay in the education system longer and gain a degree.”
Or if the parents are intelligent, the offspring are too.
Posted by Nordic at 7:19 PM on May 13
So they’re “just not getting the results they need?” What results do they need?
Their hospitals are shutting down, but that is white man’s medicine. What kind of fancy education do you need to practice “muti”?
Their power plants are shutting down because htey cannot maintain them and becuase they don’t know how to build more. But electricity is white man’s power. What kind of fancy education do you need to make tallow candles and torches? Not much, I bet.
The highways and streets are crumbling with potholes ll over, but what kind of road do you need for ox carts?
The water treatment facilities are crumbling, but what kind of treatment do you really need if you live in nomadic hunter-gatherer groups of 10- 50 people? Not much, I’ll guarantee you. Just poop on the ground and drink water from shallow wells.
And finally, what African needs the same amount of money as a white person if he is going to live like an African? They are crumbling the cities. White folks are merely delaying the inevitable by hanging around. They are now refusing to educate white youth because black youth have to make up for lost time with lots of free college. The only problem is that keeping white kids stupid merely causes them to leave for better (white) pastures and accelerates the collapse of South Africa.
Of course, once your electricity is gone and your drinking water befouled, and dysentery and other waterborne diseases rampant, most white folks (except missionaries) will leave anyway, so I guess it doesn’t make much difference.
Posted by Big Bill at 7:49 PM on May 13
On the other hand, “African people were seen as unworthy of an education and 14 years isn’t going to be enough to address that,” he told AFP.
In other news, Steven Hawking & company are trying to bring “world class” education to sub-Saharan Africans, in the search for all the “black Einsteins.”
Don’t liberals ever get tired of insinuating, whether by thought or deed, that blacks are inferior?
Why don’t blacks ever give themselves world-class institutions and all the rest? Why are their legacies always imposed on them by others in the liberal imagination?
In short, who made whites so rich, educated, etc? It’s not as if God came down and filled our bank accounts and libraries, is it?
All groups began destitute. Some, by their actions, did not remain so. Others, by their actions, did.
Posted by Svigor at 7:51 PM on May 13
14 years isn’t going to be enough to address that,”
Newsflash: 50 years isn’t going to be enough to address that. We’ve been putting up with this drek in the States for 50 years, and blacks are a minority here.
Good luck with trying to bring a black majority up to par with a white minority.
I rarely make unequivocal statements, but now’s one of those times: the Rainbow nation will NEVER succeed. The closest they will get is by achieving parity by bringing the white minority down to the level of the black majority. The task is literally impossible.
“X years isn’t going to be enough.” This will remain true for any value of x that doesn’t constitute evolutionary or geological time.
Posted by Svigor at 7:58 PM on May 13
I just had an interesting thought. Blacks might prove immensely useful to transhumanists/eugenicists and the like. Liberals will almost certainly cave on their anti-eugenics stance if it is proven that blacks can improve their lot via genetic engineering and/or designer babies. They might wish to offer the benefits only to blacks, of course, but that will prove impossible for a number of reasons.
Posted by Svigor at 8:02 PM on May 13
Apartheid is so perfidious that Blacks were suffering from the legacy of apartheid long before there was any apartheid!
Posted by Doppelgangbanger at 8:29 PM on May 13
Tim`s Travel Journal
Amy Biehl High School On Site Report
Recently I had the chance to do what some other posters have said they wanted to do, pay a visit to Amy Biehl High School. I was in Albuquerque and quite accidently came upon it while walking up and down Central Ave, aka Route 66.
The story of Amy Biehl and her murder by a gang of Blacks while she was on a do-gooder mission to disenfrancise her own ethnic group was one of the defining moments in my political awakening. The thing I remember most were her parents visiting the scene of the tragedy shortly after their daughters murder and being surrounded by their own group of five thousand Blacks, chanting and laughing in their faces. I watched transfixed, expecting another explosion of violence that the parents protectors would have been unable to prevent.
As for the High School, it is with sadness that I must report that there is nothing much to report. I entered at 7:30am on a recent Monday morning. The building is the old downtown Albuquerque Post Office and Federal building. It would bring back fond memories to anyone growing up going to Catholic school or on a military base. Very “Up The Down Staircase ish.”
On entering the school I saw a White woman in her early thirties, the kind that looked like she spent HER High School years in drama class. She didn`t pick up on my opening gambit,”Hey I`m Tim… I`m basking in White Privledge over at the Hyatt…” So I asked my first question, “Why Albuquerque?!?” She told me Amy was a native of Santa Fe N.M. While we were talking I was franticley scanning the walls for some kind of Amy and Winnie Mandela portrait adorning the walls. No such luck. I also expected to see a Portrait of Amy dieifed in a group painting of her and her attackers. Uh, no.
Feeling frustrated I asked if there was any kind of display adorning the lobby. I was shown two. One dealt completely with the restoration of the building and its funding as a charter school. Thank you Melinda and Bill Gates… The other dealt competely with the schools mission, community involvement and being a venue for College prepatory courses. The was no Amy Biehl Kumbaya literature except a small brochure. On the back it stated that Amy Bihel had died, a victim of the race war she was trying to end. Of the eight pictures on the brochure four were Black, three were Hispanic and the lone White was what they now call, whats the word? non ethnic specific?
The whole story of Amy is neither glorified, or barely even commented upon. The entire mission of the school has to do with the elements of a Charter School, NOT Black/ White relations as any AMRen poster would expect. Another question I asked was about the schools ethnic and socio-economic makeup. The Country Club district is a five minute walk away, even though the schools location has a definite urban feel to it. The teacher told me that it is for all types not just wealthy Whites trying to inculcate a sense of justice in their children, a la Amy herself.
My last chance for satisfaction came upon seeing “The Vision Room.” The lady opened it and it was a contemplation room with posters all along the walls, once again having nothing to do with racial strife, but merely the core values one needed to succeed in school.
My last revelation was one having to do with the only other teacher I saw. I disliked him on sight. He was a tall White in his early thirties or late twenties putting up his bicycle he rode to work. He came up and addressed the lady helping me, ignoring me in the process. Kind of like the self important people hanging around Starbucks or those urban outdoor outfitter stores at the malls. It made me realize that the younger generation(I`m 50, he was 30) must have grown up playing video games in their own room by themselves, not hanging with the gang down at the drainage ditch as was my case. He displayed no ethnic loyalty or courtesy to a visitor or even recognition of the presence of another adult in the room whatso ever! Not the kind of guy to chit chat with good ol boy strangers in line at the gas station. Or to count on when the revolution begins. I felt somehow very sorry for him and my own sense of losing the intergenerational loyalty of people like me. Could it have been planned that way?!? Anyway thats about it. I wish there was a bone to throw readers, but sometimes the story is there is no story!! Hope I have at least given readers a picture of what goes on there, even if it wasn`t what I expected…
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 9:36 PM on May 13
“Whites in South Africa earn five times more than their black counterparts on average, according to a new study, illustrating the enduring legacy of apartheid 14 years after its abolition.”
That they are more intelligent than blacks, better educated and have more diverse abilities shouldn’t matter, of course. The main thing is to get unqualified blacks into positions they can’t really do in order to mollify the huge egos of the black government that has some serious problems with intelligence and is leading the country to ruin.
A South Africa that has collapsed from within will be a better South Africa for the imposition of guerilla warfare by the white population. And this time the West won’t be in a position to pressure anybody, because they will be steeped in their own tribal warfare.
Posted by w.r. at 9:39 PM on May 13
Where can one go to make a donation to the Orania volkstaat? The Afrikaners in Orania are living the dream lifestyle separated from political correctness.
Posted by Team_Euro at 10:39 PM on May 13
I’ll paraphrase Nobel Prize winning scientist James Watson:
“All of our schemes are based on the assumption that their intelligence is the same as ours when all the scientific data says not really.”
There will ALWAYS be someone willing to make an excuse for chronic black underachievement. Apartheid, racism, violence, single parenthood, poor nutrition, poor curricula, lack of parental achievement, lack of resources, lack of funding, a culture denigrating education…..
Posted by ODDL at 11:25 PM on May 13
“He came up and addressed the lady helping me, ignoring me in the process…He displayed no ethnic loyalty or courtesy to a visitor or even recognition of the presence of another adult in the room whatso ever!…I wish there was a bone to throw readers, but sometimes the story is there is no story!!” (Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 9:36 PM on May 13)
This is a good story, like all your stories, Tim.
I thought it was just my overbearing high-caste Indian landlord that would ignore people in this manner—I’m sorry to hear of a young white professional acting the same way.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 2:42 AM on May 14
As someone who lived there for 24 years, the world was hoodwinked by the Marxist propaganda just as it was with Rhodesia.
Whites earn more because they can and are able because they deliver what is expected of them. Over 20% of the former white population has left SA (as we have) because they are denied jobs and promotion over very often less qualified blacks just because of the colour of their skin. Many black students in the mixed schools at all ages are two or three years older that the whites because they fail each year.
Some blacks are very good, but generally the young blacks are cursed with the thoughts propagated by the government and the re-written history books that the whites owe them a life due to Apartheid and this excuse that the former system is responsible for their problems will hold most of them back for 100 years or more, just as it is in the USA with slavery, etc.
Apartheid was the planned allocation of parts of the country to each tribe where they could grow at their own rates, with their own elected politicians and officials so that what has now happened would be avoided. The parts were fertile and some had valuable minerals in them such as platinum.
But today we read in the UK Press of riots in a black township called Alexandra near where we used to live, about 15 km north of Johannesburg (they have not changed that name yet but watch out for it), because the place has too many black Zimbabwean refugees there and they are “stealing our jobs”. The irony is that the refugees are there because the SA president, Mbeki, supports Mugabe the despot as do most of the other black African leaders.
I believe the blacks should be very grateful that the African continent was not settled by people like the early American settlers because if it had been, there would be few blacks left now and they would be on reservations. They have a lot to be grateful for but with serious HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis and the other killing diseases that are now returning because they are failing medically, they are doing a good job themselves now of keeping the population down.
Watch out soon for the demands for free food aid from the USA and Europe because of biofuel and global warming being blamed on the West, even though the continent should be able to feed itself, despite the periodical droughts. The whites have done so for decades but they have been or are being kicked off the farms now, with many being murdered in SA.
Posted by at 3:11 AM on May 14
Under apartheid, says Marius Roodt, researcher at the South African Institute for Race Relations, whites had access to “near world class” schools and universities
University of the Witswatersrand WAS a world class university. My neice has just graduated from there and she was the only white in her class, she and the Indian students graduated. The Blacks dropped out due to lack of academic ability or inability to pay the fees.
On the other hand, “African people were seen as unworthy of an education and 14 years isn’t going to be enough to address that,” he told AFP
The Bantu education system served the Blacks well. They have a lower IQ than the Whites and Indian population.
Underachievement can be ascribed to the lower quality of teachers in the mainly black townships as well as social issues related to attitudes to education
“…attitudes to education”. Now that phrase certainly does have a familiar ring to it with regards to Blacks, even here in the USA.
Whites are concentrated in urban areas, where wages are higher and skilled employment
Really! You know I always thought that historically, the Black peoples of Africa were a rural people. Didn’t they come down from the North as cattle herders, didn’t they always live in small rural villages?. Well here’s there chance to get back to their rural lifestyle and drop the evil BIG OIL dependent lifestyle of Capitalism that the Left are always pushing on White society. In any case, there seem to be plenty of Blacks enjoying the urban lifestyle of Jo’burg, I’m sure most of us have seen:
http://deathofjohannesburg.blogspot.com/
Well I haven’t got time to go through any more of this tripe. I’m sure others will pick out more.
Arc.
Posted by Arcadian at 7:38 AM on May 14
Naturally the report omits mentioning the obvious:
a) South Africa’s whites are among the most impoverished whites on the planet. Although there are admittedly some rich whites, the average white income is around US$900 per month, which is hardly well-off in international terms.
b) Although they are poorer than whites, except for the USA, South Africa’s blacks are by far the richest blacks on the planet. There are approximately 10 million illegal aliens in South Africa, out of a total population of 50 million. Now why, if South Africa’s blacks were in such desperate straits, would tens of millions of blacks stream to South Africa from elsewhere in Africa?
Posted by Anton at 2:20 PM on May 14
> Policy responses to the economic inequality caused by the apartheid system have centred on increasing funding for black schools, affirmative action and land redistribution.
Ah, another Kansas City-style orgy of wasted tax dollars in the making.
> The key therefore to achieving a more equal distribution of wages among the white, black and mixed race population is harmonising education standards across the country, say commentators.
I think we all know what the outcome of this “harmoni[s]ing” will be. Either no change in racial disparities…or worse.
> Schussler agrees, saying: “We are spending a lot on education and we’re just not getting the results we need.”
Holding your breath wouldn’t be advisable, Mr. Schussler. Oprah would have died of asphyxiation by now.
Posted by at 3:05 PM on May 14