tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/africa-middle-class-27732/articlesAfrica middle class – The Conversation2022-02-01T14:20:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1751772022-02-01T14:20:08Z2022-02-01T14:20:08ZHow black upward mobility fast-tracked racial desegregation in Johannesburg<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442920/original/file-20220127-27-1se5tqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scholars disagree about whether the formerly whites-only neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest and most economically important city, have become substantially desegregated since the end of apartheid in 1994. Some argue that racial residential segregation has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768350500163006?journalCode=cdsa20">declined only slightly</a>, while others argue that it is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098008091497">substantial</a>. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/urban-inequality-9781786998941/">recent research</a> shows that the extent of racial desegregation is much more substantial than is commonly accepted. This research is based on population census data for the years <a href="https://apps.statssa.gov.za/census01/Census96/HTML/default.htm">1996</a>, <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=3892">2001</a> and <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P03014/P030142011.pdf">2011</a> and is a result of my long-term scholarly interest in the changing nature and extent of racial inequality in Johannesburg.</p>
<p>The extent of racial residential desegregation of the formerly whites-only neighbourhoods of Johannesburg would indicate the progress that democratic South Africa has made towards achieving a racially equal society. The other main indicators are changes in earnings inequality and in the racial composition of occupations.</p>
<p>I argue that an important cause of this dramatic change is the upward occupational mobility of black <a href="https://diversityjournal.com/10806-diversity-terms-in-south-africa/">(African, Coloured and Indian: the racial definitions applied under apartheid)</a> residents into higher paid jobs. </p>
<h2>History of residential segregation</h2>
<p>The city of Johannesburg, like all other South African cities, had a long history of laws and policies to enforce racial residential segregation. These culminated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">1950 Group Areas Act</a>. </p>
<p>These laws and practices, which included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/forced-removals-south-africa">forced removals</a>, excluded black residents from living in houses and apartments in the whites-only suburbs and inner-city neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>With the major exception of <a href="http://web.mit.edu/urbanupgrading/upgrading/case-examples/overview-africa/alexandra-township.html">Alexandra</a> in the northern suburbs, most black people were restricted to living in houses in the racially-prescribed southern suburbs of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto-johannesburg">Soweto</a>, <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/rejul77.8.pdf">Eldorado Park</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/indian-community-lenasia">Lenasia</a>. Many black residents, mostly African, continued to live in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Group-Areas-Act-South-Africa-1950">“white group areas”</a>. But only as domestic workers in backyard rooms.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-johannesburgs-suburban-elites-maintain-apartheid-inequities-169295">How Johannesburg's suburban elites maintain apartheid inequities</a>
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<p>The racial desegregation of Johannesburg began during the late 1970s in the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.1995.tb00531.x">inner-city neighbourhoods</a>, well before the Group Areas Act was abolished <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/25313/103012/F-896018642/ZAF25313.pdf">in 1991</a>. The initial wave of desegregation was caused by the extreme housing shortage in black neighbourhoods, and the lack of demand among white residents for inner-city apartments. </p>
<p>From 1991, following the unbanning of liberation movements and start of talks to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/negotiations-and-transition">end apartheid</a>, all legal restrictions that prevented black people from living in formerly whites-only neighbourhoods were abolished. </p>
<p>In subsequent decades, the suburbs also became increasingly desegregated. Substantial levels of desegregation first occurred in the southern suburbs, and in the suburban strip to the east and west of the inner-city. The more expensive northern suburbs were the last to become substantially desegregated. </p>
<h2>Long term trends</h2>
<p>To achieve an accurate estimate of the extent of racial desegregation between 1996 and 2011, my method measured only those residents who lived in the main houses and apartments in the formerly whites-only neighbourhoods, and their surrounding post-apartheid middle-class suburban developments. It excluded all residents who lived in domestic servant rooms, granny flats, backyard rooms, caravans, shack settlements, peri-urban farms and employers’ hostels.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/urban-inequality-9781786998941/">results</a> showed that the percentage of residents in formerly whites-only neighbourhoods who were white declined from 61% in 1996 to 44% in 2011. The percentage of African residents increased from 30% in 1996 to 39% in 2011. The percentage of Coloured residents increased from 4% to 6% and that of Indians increased from 4% to 10%. In other words, by 2011, black residents already comprised just over half (56%) of the population that lived in houses and apartments in the formerly white areas of Johannesburg (Figure 1). </p>
<p>By extrapolating the growth rate of residents from 2011 (last census) onwards, I estimate that African residents in the formerly whites-only neighbourhoods would have outnumbered white residents from about 2014. </p>
<p><strong>Figure 1</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441487/original/file-20220119-21-zvkof0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Figure 1. The changing percentage racial composition of the formerly whites-only residential neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, 1996 to 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span>
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<p>The inner-city neighbourhoods desegregated rapidly. By 1996, 87% of all residents were black and by 2011 they had increased to 91%. In the southern suburbs, the percentage of black residents increased from 30% in 1996 to 50% in 2001 and then to 72% in 2011. The percentage of black residents in the northern suburbs increased only slowly – from 27% in 1996 to 30% in 2001. It then increased more rapidly to 44% by 2011.</p>
<p>These long-term trends in racial desegregation can be explained by the different population growth rates of black and white residents in Johannesburg. They can also be explained by the <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/the-new-black-middle-class-in-south-africa/">upward mobility of black residents</a> into high-income middle-class jobs and by the general <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00020189808707885">lack of resistance to desegregation</a> by the apartheid government and white residents. </p>
<p>Over the last 40 years, the size of the white population has remained largely unchanged, while that of the black population has <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/urban-inequality-9781786998941/">more than doubled</a>. The supply of houses has grown through densification and geographical expansion. More houses have therefore become available to black residents in the erstwhile whites-only neighbourhoods and their adjacent, similarly-priced post-apartheid housing developments.</p>
<h2>Black middle class</h2>
<p>After the abolition of the Group Areas Act <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-fw-de-klerk-announces-group-areas-act-will-be-repealed">in 1991</a>, the only substantial restriction on where black people could live was the formidable cost of housing.</p>
<p>But, the large size of the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/urban-inequality-9781786998941/">black managerial, professional and technical middle class</a> has nonetheless meant that there were enough black residents willing and able to move to the formerly whites-only suburbs in sufficiently large numbers to result in the desegregation of these neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>This is best shown in the most expensive northern suburbs. There the occupational class composition of black residents almost exactly matches that of the white residents. In 2011, 60% of all employed white residents living in the main house were middle class. For Indian residents it was also 60%, for African residents it was 51% and 49% for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coloured">Coloured</a> residents.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-lift-the-ideological-haze-in-debates-about-africas-middle-class-76365">It's time to lift the ideological haze in debates about Africa's middle class</a>
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<p>The growth of the black high-income middle class was, therefore, an important cause of residential desegregation. At the height of apartheid, in about 1970, only 11% of the middle class workers were black. By the end of apartheid this percentage had grown to 25%. This was largely due to the growth of racially-segregated
schools, universities, local government and hospitals, which <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Race-Class-and-the-Changing-Division-of-Labour-Under-Apartheid/Crankshaw/p/book/9780415146135">employed many black professionals and managers</a>.</p>
<p>Post-apartheid, the abolition of racially segregated education and the <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/the-new-black-middle-class-in-south-africa/">introduction of affirmative action laws and policies</a> led to the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/urban-inequality-9781786998941/">rapid growth</a> of the black middle class. </p>
<h2>Implications of study</h2>
<p>This study shows that by 2011 the racial desegregation of the formerly whites-only neighbourhoods of Johannesburg was substantial. White residents comprised a minority – only 44% of all residents. </p>
<p>This evidence contradicts the widely held belief that there has been very little racial desegregation in Johannesburg since the end of apartheid. </p>
<p>These findings are important because they show that despite the widespread black poverty caused by <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/Presentation%20QLFS%20Q2_2021.pdf">unemployment</a>, there has nonetheless been some progress towards the goal of a racially equal society due to the growth of the black high-income middle class.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Owen Crankshaw receives funding from the National Research Foundation (Grant Numbers 85462 and 119126) and the University of Cape Town to conduct this research. </span></em></p>Despite widespread black poverty caused by unemployment, progress has been made towards the goal of a racially equal society.Owen Crankshaw, Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859422017-11-01T13:19:51Z2017-11-01T13:19:51ZWhy the private sector’s hype about the African middle class isn’t helpful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192424/original/file-20171030-18683-10ovx28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Oluwole Urban Market near Marina in Lagos. Being middle class is more than just being a consumer.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The African middle class is of huge interest to business. This was confirmed again recently by well attended seminars in South Africa’s big cities to discuss
<a href="http://www.uctunileverinstitute.co.za/">“African Lions: groundbreaking study on the middle class in sub-Saharan Africa”</a>. </p>
<p>The study was motivated by the African Development Bank’s <a href="http://www.uctunileverinstitute.co.za/research/africa/">diagnosis</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(the African middle class) has grown by over 240% in just over a decade, and the bank defines 15 million households as now being middle class.</p>
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<p>The narrow focus of the study is guided by a particular interest and echoes a poorly informed narrative about the structure of societies in Africa. It is void of any class related analysis and offers little bearing on reality. People are seen only as consumers with no political relevance. </p>
<p>The study was done by the University of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and the global market research company <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en">IPSOS</a> over 18 months in ten cities – Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Douala, Dar es Salaam, Kano, Lagos, Nairobi, Luanda and Lusaka. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/english-releases/sub-saharan-middle-class-worth-over-400-million-per-day-300467335.html">It defines</a> as middle class someone who has a daily income of between USD$4 and USD$70. He or she also has a disposable income; is employed or is running a business or studying at college; and has some secondary school education. According to this criteria, a whopping 60% of the urban population surveyed fall into this definition of middle class. </p>
<p>The researchers conclude that those who qualify as middle class have an average income of USD$12 a day and an average household income of USD$17 a day. Of these, a third had a full time job, while many ran mainly informal businesses.</p>
<p>According to the study, an estimated 100 million people outside South Africa have an aggregated spending power of more than USD$400 million a day. </p>
<p>It’s clear that the research is motivated by economic interests, targeting the so-called middle class as the object of desire for retailers. As the head of the institute <a href="http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/print-version/sub-saharan-africa-middle-class-represents-r13tr-a-month-market-2017-05-19">explained</a>, the core of the interest in the estimated ZAR1.3 trillion-a-month market was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a better understanding of the consumer landscape on the continent, (by exploring) aspirations, media consumption, buying patterns, brand relationships and much more (of such middle class).</p>
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<p>Similar interests by the private sector exist in business circles beyond the continent. Large companies paid US$1160 and small ones US$510 to gain insights into the investment opportunities at a recent <a href="http://marketing.business-sweden.se/acton/media/28818/mea-summit-september-2017">“Middle East and Africa Summit”</a> in Stockholm. The second day was devoted to sub-Saharan Africa, which was described as having</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a bulging middle class hungry for inclusion and more sophisticated consumer demands.</p>
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<p>Such approaches perpetuate the original hype over the discovery of the emerging middle classes in the global South, defined in terms of higher living standards. They are measured on consumption and lifestyle related to Western products and status symbols. But no insights are offered into how being middle class could be understood in a social context. This would include status and awareness as well as the political choices people make. </p>
<p>This would require a different, analytically much more ambitious grasp of the economic and political realities in African cities and indeed wider societies.</p>
<h2>The fight back</h2>
<p>In the meantime, scholars in a variety of academic disciplines have started to critically explore the middle class notion. They properly investigate its meaning and definition. This is important because a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2016.1245183">middle class debate</a> reduced purely to the exploration of consumer habits can only be used for self-serving purposes. </p>
<p>In contrast, the new scholarly efforts put an African middle class debate into more meaningful perspectives. They offer a deeper analysis of cultural factors and identities, consciousness, social positioning and relations to other groups as well as institutions and the state. They are on their way to a proper class analysis and the policy options and implications by the social group or groups in formation. </p>
<p>The challenge is to look beyond the superficial number crunching that defines a middle class in purely income and expenditure figures, void of any further analysis of other <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">relevant factors</a>.</p>
<p>Such apolitical perspectives tend to put an ideological smokescreen around socio-economic processes. These rest on the assumption that relatively high economic growth rates suggest “progress” and “development”. Meanwhile, little changes in the daily lives of most people. Crumbs from the table of the haves don’t lift them out of a fragile socio-economic habitat bordering on poverty. Many urban and rural people continue to exist in utter destitution.</p>
<h2>Social change</h2>
<p>Engaging with such challenges, exploring how being middle class could be understood and mobilised for social change, would require a different analytical grasp of the socio-economic and political realities in African societies.</p>
<p>Presumably, such different research findings would most likely not be of interest to the business. But, the more socio-politically motivated analyses might contribute towards raising awareness of the class structures perpetuated. These are not fundamentally changed by a growing number of consumers, who are able to buy goods in the shopping malls and enjoy a “Western” lifestyle.</p>
<p>Rather, the advocacy and promotion of social justice and equality based on truly transformative social policies with deeper redistributive effects, could in the long run create a much larger and more sustainable market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber is the editor of The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class: <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/</a></span></em></p>Scholars have started to investigate what it really means to be middle class in Africa.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/813662017-08-13T08:40:46Z2017-08-13T08:40:46ZThe African middle class matters: but not for the reasons commonly put forward<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181465/original/file-20170808-16039-13cbs39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The debate about Africa's middle class has largely ignored earlier analyses on African elites.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days the African middle class is widely discussed as a phenomenon considered indicative of social change.</p>
<p>But a great deal of the debate hasn’t been very well informed. For a long time contributions lacked a rigorous analysis, failing to examine the so-called middle class in terms of its potential as a proper class. People involved in the debate hardly bothered to engage with the more methodological aspects of the analysis of classes, which has a long tradition in social sciences and should be an integral part of any analysis.</p>
<p>Most problematic was the fiddling with figures, which classified people according to a minimum income as middle class. This is clearly not a very sensible way to approach proper class definition. It puts almost exclusive emphasis on financial and monetary aspects. But professional and social status, cultural norms and lifestyle related attributes as well as political orientation(s) and influence were often ignored. Where they were considered, it was often only in passing.</p>
<p>The debate largely ignored earlier analyses on African elites. It promoted the assumption that the middle class(es) are a positive ingredient for the development of and in African societies. </p>
<p>But such optimism is unhelpful both in terms of the potential economic role of these loosely defined middle classes, as well as the expectations about their political relevance.</p>
<p>In the meantime that’s started to change. Scholars from various disciplines related to African Studies are gaining the upper hand and claiming ownership. <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">New publications</a> testify to increasingly concerted efforts to respond with different and more nuanced perspectives.</p>
<p>These engagements offer insights based on more than lofty generalisations void of any social realities on the ground. Rather, the case studies test some of the assumptions and are able to portrait existing identities and practices of social segments of societies, which might be considered as middle class - or not. </p>
<p>So then, what class is the middle class?</p>
<h2>Caution required</h2>
<p>What is lumped together as middle classes represent at best an opaque awareness – if not about themselves (in the plural) – then at least about society and their position, aims and aspirations. Such ambiguity explains the different political and social orientations of members of a middle class, their different roles and positions in social struggles and their difference in interests.</p>
<p>The conclusions seem to suggest that there is no social force in the making, which by status and definition would indeed be the torch bearer for more democracy, participation, human rights, social equality and redistribution of wealth beyond benefiting just the group. One might call this a class interest, shared by many members of these middle classes across the continent. </p>
<p>But depending on the circumstances, ethnicity, pigmentation and other criteria (not least religion) matter at least as much as (at best) diffuse class awareness.</p>
<p>This should not stand in the way of continued interest in this species called middle class, which at a closer look is not as new as some contributions to the wider debate suggest. After all, there were always some middle layers of societies with a set of differing interests and orientations – only that their visibility and size in African countries seems to have increased lately.</p>
<p>But we should be much more cautious about providing simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms and the impact on transformation of societies these middle classes are able – or willing – to promote.</p>
<p>After all, it is neither the middle class(es) nor even the upper fifth of the income pyramid that has any influence on the distribution of wealth in societies. They too are at the receiving end. </p>
<p>It is indeed the top decimal if not the top 5% or an even smaller fraction that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andy-sumner">drives inequality</a>, and it is these haves that have grasped the steering wheel. Their forms of appropriation and enrichment are the ultimate determinants of the scope and limit of poverty reduction by means of redistributive measures in favour of those in the bottom half of society.</p>
<p>To understand inequalities and the mechanisms of their reproduction, the motto coined by University of Cambridge economist <a href="http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/emeritus/jgp5">Gabriel Palma </a> is appropriate. He points to the decisive impact of the wealthy segment of societies as regards growing inequalities on a global scale and <a href="http://www.networkideas.org/featart/mar2011/Palma.pdf">concludes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s the share of the rich, stupid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One is tempted to suspect that the middle class(es) hype seeks to propose a historical mission of these social layers in terms of future perspectives. But, in the light of the real (also material and political) power relations and structures of societies and the global economy, they are never able to live up to this mission.</p>
<p>Despite this sobering conclusion, the current engagement with the phenomenon called the African middle class(es) is anything but obsolete. Independent of their size, they signify modified social relations in African societies, which indeed deserve attention and rigorous analysis – with the emphasis on the latter.</p>
<p><em>These edited extracts are from the Introduction and Conclusion of Henning Melber (ed.), <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class</a>: Myths, Realities and Critical Engagements.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We should be wary of simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms the middle classes can promote.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/597972016-05-24T13:04:39Z2016-05-24T13:04:39ZAfrica’s rising middle class: time to sort out fact from fiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123755/original/image-20160524-19272-1qkqve7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A street trader looks out from his store in Cape Town, South Africa. Defining people who earn US$2 a day as middle class doesn't make sense.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the turn of the century the middle classes of the global South have taken centre stage in economic policy circles. Animated by diversification of some countries’ economies, a handful of economists from international agencies and think-tanks began a discourse that then entered African and development studies.</p>
<p>This in turn led to calls for policies to be redirected. Countries were urged to strengthen their middle classes. The leading proponents were the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) followed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The OECD’s view is evident in its <a href="http://www.oecd.org/site/devpgd2012/49067954.pdf">Global Development Perspectives 2012</a> report and the UNDP’s in its <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report">2013</a> Human Development Report.</p>
<p>The main economists behind this push included World Bank chief economist <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/4013/WPS4816.pdf">Martin Ravallion</a>, his former colleague, <a href="https://williameasterly.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/34_easterly_middleclassconsensus_prp.pdf">William Easterly</a>, Nancy Birdsall from the <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/publication/indispensable-middle-class-developing-countries-or-rich-and-rest-not-poor-and-rest">Centre for Global Development in Washington</a>, and Homi Kharas from the <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/01/global-consumers-khraras">OECD Development Centre</a>.</p>
<p>They define middle class as a group of people with a minimum of anything from US$2 to $10 monetary income/expenditure a day.</p>
<p>But such a reduced approach misses much of what is required for a proper analysis of a class – its character, and its positioning in and impact on society. Rather, the discovery of the middle class was linked to its anticipated role in promoting social change to which those in the “business of development” could pin their hopes.</p>
<p>This, however, shifts the debate away from the critical assessment of obstacles to development. It thereby gets in the way of a proper diagnosis of the real challenges to promoting more social equality and justice in some of the most unequal societies in our world. </p>
<h2>The problem with the definition</h2>
<p>Defining the middle class as a group of people with a minimum of anything from $2 to $10 monetary income/expenditure a day is itself fuzzy. </p>
<p>With reference to the $2 threshold, the <a href="http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf">African Development Bank</a> declared one-third – 300 million – of the continent’s population as middle class in 2011. A year later it adjusted its size up to 500 million. It considered this a key factor for development.</p>
<p>It takes quite some fantasy to imagine how, based on the living costs in Africa’s urban centres, a $2-a-day threshold catapults someone from the $1.99 margin as criteria for poor into a middle-class existence. And then into playing a pioneering role in the continent’s future transformation. It seems, therefore, that all those not starving are nowadays considered “middle class”.</p>
<p>Limiting the debate to purely monetary categories also ignores a range of other important aspects. These include employment or social status, sources of income, lifestyle-related attributes, cultural norms, and religious or ethnic identities as contributing factors. </p>
<p>Rigorously explored differentiations – not to mention any substantial class analysis – have been largely absent. This turns the “middle class” into a “muddling class”, devoid of any true meaning in terms of social analysis that seeks to identify a social agenda and the role members of society can play in transforming societies. </p>
<p>The new demand for supporting the middle classes within developmental policy therefore remains a vague appeal. Who, after all, should be supported for what purpose? </p>
<p>African studies have more recently offered much more nuanced assessments from the point of view of <a href="http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/AP_161.pdf">social anthropology </a> and <a href="http://www.bayreuth-academy.uni-bayreuth.de/resources/Academy-Reflects-1-Neubert-Stoll-fin.pdf">cultural studies</a>, <a href="http://www.afd.fr/jahia/webdav/site/afd/shared/PUBLICATIONS/RECHERCHE/Scientifiques/Documents-de-travail/118-document-travail-VA.pdf">political science</a> and <a href="http://www.iwim.uni-bremen.de/Siakeu/African_Lions_Sceptical.pdf">economics</a>. </p>
<p>These offer a better diagnosis of how certain segments within societies change, adapt and adjust. And how a higher income, combined with other factors, might have an impact on policy orientations and social positions. </p>
<h2>Misplaced expectations</h2>
<p>A closer look at the widely held assumption that middle classes by definition play a positive – meaning socially progressive – role <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/journal/v27/n2/pdf/ejdr20153a.pdf">is not convincing</a>. History suggests a rather mixed balance, if not mainly opportunistic behaviour, of middle class members. They usually do not tend to bite the hand that feeds them.</p>
<p>The new Chinese middle class is anything but known for its opposition towards an authoritarian state. The Chilean middle class of the early 1970s in its majority did not side with Salvador Allende, but supported the military coup by General Augusto Pinochet.</p>
<p>Politically, middle classes seem not as democratic as many of those singing their praises believe. According to a recent Afrobarometer <a href="https://www.rienner.com/uploads/50ec61134634c.pdf">survey</a>, a majority of those with higher education argue that the less educated should not have the same say in democratic elections, as they would not know what is best for their country.</p>
<p>In South Africa the black middle class is no more likely to hold democratic values than other black South Africans. But it is more likely to want government to secure higher-order <a href="http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Working%20paper/Afropaperno151.pdf">survival needs</a> over basic ones.</p>
<p>It is also dubious that African middle classes by their sheer existence promote economic growth. Their increase was mainly a limited result of the trickle-down effects of the resource-based economic growth rates during the early years of this century. Their position and role in society hardly has the economic potential and dynamics to induce further productive investment that contributes to sustainable economic growth.</p>
<p>And there is also little evidence of any correlation between economic growth and social progress, as even a working paper of the International Monetary Fund <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1353.pdf">admits</a>. </p>
<p>Even the African Development Bank concedes that income discrepancies as measured by the Gini-coefficient have <a href="http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/ADER%202012%20%28En%29.pdf">increased</a>, while six among the ten most unequal countries in the world are in Africa. Real sociopolitical influence is hardly owned by a growing middle class.</p>
<p>While the poor partly became a little bit less poor, the rich got much richer.</p>
<h2>Myth of Africa’s growing middle class</h2>
<p>The celebrated growth of the African middle class(es) is also questionable. The UNDP’s 2013 Human Development <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report">Report</a> predicted that by 2030 80% of middle classes would come from the global South, but only 2% would be from sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
<p>Recent assessments suggest that it is not the middle of African societies that expands, but the lower and higher social groups. According to a report by the <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/07/08/a-global-middle-class-is-more-promise-than-reality/">Pew Research Centre</a> only a few African countries had a meaningful increase of those in the middle-income category. </p>
<p>Multinationals in the retail and consumption sector have already reacted to the dwindling purchasing power of the middle class. They have reversed earlier investments. The world’s biggest food producer, Nestlé, has reduced its presence in Africa by <a href="http://mgafrica.com/article/2015-10-27-18-million-thats-the-size-of-africas-middle-classand-with-chinas-woes-it-could-just-be-wiped-out">15% of its employees</a>. </p>
<h2>Debate shows signs of shifting</h2>
<p>Fortunately the discussions following the middle-class hype have created sufficient awareness to trigger a debate separating fact from fiction in the assumed transformative <a href="https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publication/africas-new-middle-class">power of a middle class</a>.</p>
<p>This includes challenging the myth that <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/R/bo25073345.html">a middle class is the cure</a> for the social woes of countries considered “less developed” and affected by massive poverty. Rather, its variety of members will most likely continue to act in their own best interests. </p>
<p>Deconstructing and demystifying the trendy discourse, and thereby dismantling the proclaimed middle-class torch bearers, brings back the sobering need to properly analyse and assess social structures. The aim would be to offer a more realistic diagnosis of where the dividing lines between a policy for the rich and one for the poor should or could be drawn.</p>
<p>If we are serious about the need for social change and transformation, we should be as serious about class analysis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some economists have touted the rising middle class as a panacea for Africa’s challenges. But a more realistic diagnosis of what makes up a middle class is needed.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.