Full Description
Provides the most comprehensive account since the early 1960s of South Africa's "black middle class".
2016 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
The "rise of the black middle class" is one of the most visible aspects of post-apartheid society in South Africa. Yet while it has been a major actor in the country's democratic reshaping, analysis of its role has been all but lacking. Rather, the image presented by the media has been of "black diamonds", consumers of the products of advanced industrial economies, and of corrupt "tenderpreneurs" who use their political connections to obtain contracts. This book seeks to complicate that picture with a much-needed analysis that recounts its historical development in colonial society prior to 1994, before examining the size, shape andstructure of the new black middle class in contemporary South Africa and its relation to its counterparts in the Global South.
Roger Southall is Professor Emeritus in Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand.
Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Swaziland): Jacana
Contents
Introduction: Why Study the Black Middle Class?
The Middle Class: Problems and Controversies
The Black Middle Class in South Africa 1910-1994
The Black Middle Class in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Size, Shape and Structure
Black Class Formation under the ANC
Education and Black Upward Social Mobility
The Black Middle Class at Work
The Social World of the Black Middle Class
The Politics of the Black Middle Class
Afterword: South Africa's Black Middle Class in an African Context
