The Multifaceted Roots of Post-Apartheid South Africa’s Persistent Economic Inequality

Overall, this paper aims to explore and identify the roots and dynamics that cause economic inequality to persist in post-apartheid South Africa. While conducting research for this investigation, familiar themes arose. After sifting through numerous sources, I realized that all of the core arguments and elements of my three critical analysis papers this semester—which focused on the African continent more broadly—were evident and possessed explanatory power vis-à-vis the persistence of economic inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Therefore, I will structure this paper around the three critical analysis papers’ core arguments (in reverse order) and demonstrate how the involved dynamics accurately explain the source and continuation of economic inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. A brief overview of the three papers’ arguments and how they will proxy in the case study of post-apartheid South Africa will subsequently be provided, followed by the main argumentative sections that expatiate the details.