Tearing us Apart: Inequalities in southern Africa

This moving, inspiring, but damming book starts with the following summary:

The current levels of inequality in Southern Africa are amongst the highest in the world, tearing apart communities and societies in the region. Although several promising initiatives were taken after independence to expand social services and to redress the colonial legacies, none of the countries covered by this study - Angola, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe - managed to significantly reduce inequality.

The country case studies show that each are these five countries are characterised by unacceptable levels of inequality and paint a detailed picture of the historical nature and current manifestations of this inequality. The book clearly shows that to reduce poverty we need to reduce inequality.  As an immediate intervention to free millions of people in the region from the debilitating and dehumanising effects of poverty, the introduction of an unconditional basic income grant seems an appropriate measure to take.  A report of the positive effects of introducing even a very small grant of around $10 a month per individual in one community in Namibia is available from:

www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pd

For public financial management experts the book raises the key issue of what the role should be for governments that really want to see a world free of poverty (to use the World Bank’s misused strap-line). Shouldn’t Governments work to reduce inequality by having progressive taxation systems?  This should mean that the rich pay a significantly higher proportion of their income and wealth in taxation than the middle classes, whilst the poor are totally exempt from taxation.  Governments should then use this income to provide services - mainly aimed at the poorer sections of society.  So these services should be provided at no cost to the direct users.  Fees or ‘cost-sharing’ will exclude the poor and should therefore not be used.

The book was edited and the chapter on Namibia co-written by Herbert Jauch, the former director of LaRRI, the trade union research centre in Namibia.  He ends with the overview of the real road to eradicating poverty:

Changing the entrenched neo-liberal development paradigm will certainly be an ongoing struggle as different class interests (and imperial interests) will inevitably clash. An alternative development agenda will have to be built from below and place redistribution and social justice above the interests of global corporations and their allies among governments. The market-based development paradigm of the past decades simply offers no hope for the poor.

The complete book is available for free down load from:

http://www.osisa.org/books/economic-justice/regional/tearing-us-apart-inequalities-southern-africa