COVID 19 and inequality in South Africa WHAT DO WE KNOW (original) (raw)
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Politics, Policy, and Inequality in South Africa Under COVID-19
Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy: A triannual Journal of Agrarian South Network and CARES, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated inequalities in South Africa. The question posed in this article is whether the pandemic and its associated responses offer the opportunity for a more egalitarian society in South Africa, or a more intensively unequal society. The future is contested. On the one hand, there is the consolidation of labor displacement, a growth in unemployment, and a deepening of inequality. On the other, there is the possibility of a turning point toward significant advances in the de-commodification of education, health, and transport. But as with much of the Global South, South Africa has relatively high levels of informality compared to the Global North, which has implications for the impact of the pandemic and the structure of the responses.
Law, Democracy and Development, 2022
The pre-Covid-19 world of work was rife with inequalities and difficulties, with more than 40 per cent of working-age South Africans unemployed. The majority of those in employment were barely able to eke out a living-between 20 per cent to 30 per cent were working in the informal economy, 1 mostly without labour rights and social protection and earning low incomes that trapped them in poverty. The precarious nature of the South African labour market before the Covid-19 pandemic was characterised by casualisation, informalisation, and externalisation of work.
Journal of African Law
This article explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable people in South Africa in the specific context of poverty and inequality. It does so by first looking at the conceptual context and then highlighting the extent of the impact both from a constitutional and human rights context and from a legislative context. It uses the poor and vulnerable as a proxy to explore the impact of the pandemic (and the measures put in place to contain it) on the specific constitutional rights of vulnerable people, before suggesting a human rights-based approach to managing the pandemic. It concludes that, despite the South African government having undertaken some of the actions recommended, there remains room for improvement and scope for further research, as the pandemic is expected to continue for some time.
COVID-19: The South African experience
Interventional Neuroradiology, 2021
The coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic affected the countries differently. South Africa is a middle-income country with a struggling economy and a resource-constrained public healthcare system. Three aspects of the pandemic in South Africa are examined, the lockdown and its effect on personal freedoms, how health care resources were used and the novel stratification of health workers into vulnerability categories. It is a perspective written after experiencing the first pandemic peak in 2020.
South Africa's Social Policy Response to Covid-19: Relief Measures in an Unequal Society
2021
This report discusses South Africa's initial social policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It provides a timeline of the early stages of the pandemic and of the government's legislative interventions. South Africa's social policy response was premised on the country's post-apartheid development agenda, which is significantly informed by the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). In response to the pandemic, South Africa's government rolled out a social relief and economic support package worth approximately 10% of GDP. This package funded, for instance, a special Covid-19 "Social Relief of Distress Grant" for all those individuals who were unemployed and did not receive any other form of social assistance. South Africa could roll out such a massive social relief and economic support package because the necessary institutional infrastructure was already in place. The report concludes with some reflections on the broader social implications of...
South Africa's Social Policy Responses to Covid-19: Relief Measures in an Unequal Society
CRC 1342 Covid-19 Social Policy Response Series, 21, 2021
This report discusses South Africa’s initial social policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It provides a timeline of the early stages of the pandemic and of the government’s legislative interventions. South Africa’s social policy response was premised on the country’s post-apartheid development agenda, which is significantly informed by the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). In response to the pandemic, South Africa’s government rolled out a social relief and economic support package worth approximately 10% of GDP. This package funded, for instance, a special Covid-19 “Social Relief of Distress Grant” for all those individuals who were unemployed and did not receive any other form of social assistance. South Africa could roll out such a massive social relief and economic support package because the necessary institutional infrastructure was already in place. The report concludes with some reflections on the broader social implications of the pandemic.
Income-related health inequalities associated with COVID-19 in South Africa
2020
The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has resulted in an unprecedented dislocation of society especially in South Africa. The South African government has imposed a number of measures aimed at controlling the epidemic, chief being a nationwide lockdown. This has resulted in income loss for firms and individuals, with vulnerable populations (low earners, those in informal and precarious employment, etc.) more likely to be adversely affected through job losses and the resulting income loss. Income loss will likely result in reduced ability to access healthcare and a nutritious diet, thus adversely affecting health outcomes. Given the foregoing, we hypothesize that the economic dislocation caused by the coronavirus will disproportionately affect the health of the poor. Using the fif th wave of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) dataset conducted in 2017 and the first wave of the NIDS-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) dataset conducted in May/ June 2020, this paper estima...