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TRANSCENDING DUAL ECONOMIES: REFLECTIONS ON ‘POPULAR ECONOMIES IN SOUTH AFRICA’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

Ralph Callebert
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Abstract

A recent special issue of Africa on ‘Popular Economies in South Africa’ drew attention to local economies and to the livelihoods that link these popular, informal economies and the lives of the poor to the formal and global economies. This approach offers a promising avenue for questioning academic and policy discourses about unemployment and poverty in South Africa that are curiously reminiscent of the dualist modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s. Both the idea of a South African ‘underclass’, as discussed by Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass, and the discourse of a first and a second economy, notably promoted by former President Thabo Mbeki, assume a fundamental divide in South Africa's economy based on socio-economic exclusion. These assumptions, however, fail to capture the many ways in which people cross these divides in making a living and have problematic policy implications. Highlighting these many and complex connections, as the recent special issue did, as well as historicizing the informal economy can help us to conceptualize the South African economy as a whole rather than as existing in two separate worlds.

Résumé

Un numéro spécial d‘Africa consacré aux « Économies populaires en Afrique du Sud » attirait récemment l'attention sur les économies locales et sur les moyens de subsistance qui lient ces économies populaires informelles et la vie des pauvres aux économies globales formelles. Cette approche offre une voie prometteuse pour remettre en question les discours académiques et politiques sur le chômage et la pauvreté en Afrique du Sud qui rappellent curieusement les théories dualistes de la modernisation des années 1950 et 1960. Tant l'idée d'une « sous-classe » sud-africaine, dont ont traité Jeremy Seekings et Nicoli Nattrass, que le discours d'une première et deuxième économie, notamment soutenu par l'ancien Président Thabo Mbeki, supposent l'existence d'un clivage fondamental, au sein de l’économie sud-africaine, basé sur l'exclusion socioéconomique. Or, ces prémisses ne prennent pas en compte les nombreuses manières dont les gens dépassent ces clivages en gagnant leur vie, et ont des implications problématiques en termes de politique. La mise en lumière de ces connexions nombreuses et complexes, comme l'a fait récemment le numéro spécial, ainsi que l'historisation de l’économie informelle peuvent nous aider à conceptualiser l’économie sud-africaine comme un tout, plutôt que comme une économie qui existerait dans deux mondes séparés.

Type
Debate: Approaching African Economies
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 119 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

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