OPINION | Political choices drive inequality and democratic erosion

Inequality is a political choice – one that endangers democracy and strips politics of its emancipatory edge. Two recent reports make this case.

The first, the Global Inequality Report commissioned under SA’s G20 presidency and chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, examines the drivers and consequences of global inequality.

It affirms a link long established by others: inequality dulls democracy’s shine. It leaves ordinary people feeling that the democratic game is rigged in favour of elites, as billionaires accumulate wealth while the rest of humanity scrapes by.

Cornered by rising household debt, poverty, and collapsing prospects for upward mobility, people become more vulnerable to polarising politics of fear, hate and exclusion.

The second, the World Inequality Report (2026), concludes that inequality decimates the very constituencies needed to defeat it.

As parties that once represented workers endorse “market-friendly” policies, low-income voters disperse across party lines, making organised resistance even harder.

Taken together, the reports charge that reducing inequality is a matter of political will and that the tools to upend it already exist. As the ANC gathered for its 5th National General Council in December last year, the link between inequality and the crisis of democracy came into sharp focus.

It was central to the party’s evaluation of over 30 years of democracy’s failures. Noting that SA’s inequality remains the highest in the world and that the country enters its fourth decade of democracy with this trend set to continue, the NGC base document posed a piercing question.

Why has democratic SA failed to combat inequality and emulate the achievements of its peers, such as Brazil, with whom it has long competed for the top spot in the inequality rankings?

The ANC’s own account concedes that it expanded social provision – water, electricity, housing, social grants – on a large scale, but it did so without shifting the underlying structure that reproduces inequality. It blames this on “succumbing to a neoliberal paradigm”, charging that the democratic state’s capacity to drive development has been weakened by rampant outsourcing and “tenderisation”.

The consequence is that the richest 10% control 86% of the country’s wealth. The unemployment queue has swelled to millions, and a growing generation of youth is stuck in waithood, locked out of pathways to adulthood. Poverty is feminised.

The social wage is steadily eaten away by rising costs and increasingly substandard services. Working-class communities bear the brunt through job cuts, poverty wages, and chronic insecurity.

The core claim is straightforward: neoliberalism has not only been bad for the economic fortunes of the majority, but it has also given us bad politics.

As life gets harder and ordinary people feel political parties that once represented them are now extensions of the elite, they turn to those offering simple yet dangerous answers.

Operation Dudula and the Patriotic Alliance feed on that mood. SA is in a profound crisis, the document concludes, and renewal will take more than step-asides or keeping those with long fingers away from government coffers. Renewal will require a new economics to reconnect the ANC with its social base, the working class.

The ANC is known for its capacity to self-critique, but that cannot be said for its policy positions. It has a familiar refrain: “The ANC has the best policies; what fails is implementation.”

The NGC, in both the base document and the declaration, broke with this comfort by arguing instead for a paradigm shift away from neoliberalism. All of this sounds right, but there are serious constraints. First, the ANC’s support dropped to 40% in the last election, forcing it into a coalition.

The second-largest party in the GNU is closely aligned with big business interests. The other progressive parties, including PAC, RISE Mzansi, and GOOD, have too small a vote share to give the ANC a leg up.

Outside the GNU, the MK Party seems content to gum up the works of democracy, while the EFF is sometimes more concerned with one-upmanship. Second, mismanagement of the state, corruption and looting have made ordinary people suspicious of state-led solutions.

Third, the ANC has a Janus-like character – punting radical rhetoric in the party while advancing conservative economic policy in the state. The path ahead is uncertain.

But this much is clear – choiceless democracies, where people vote yet cannot shape policy, are unsustainable. When votes don’t translate to a real break with the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, budget cuts and unemployment, democracy suffers.

As the ANC gears up for its January 8 activities in Rustenburg, the need for a paradigm shift is more urgent than ever. Whether the party has the political will to drive it and whether the balance of forces will permit it, remain to be seen.