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An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa

The South African labour market has been characterised by income inequality, which emanates from past discrimination legacies. The wage gap between white workers and blacks have been marginally high. The same goes for the wage gap between males and females who find themselves performing equal value...

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Main Author: Khewana, Xolile
Other Authors: Collier, Debbie
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Commercial Law 2022
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access_status_str Open Access
author Khewana, Xolile
author2 Collier, Debbie
author_browse Collier, Debbie
Khewana, Xolile
author_facet Collier, Debbie
Khewana, Xolile
author_sort Khewana, Xolile
collection Thesis
description The South African labour market has been characterised by income inequality, which emanates from past discrimination legacies. The wage gap between white workers and blacks have been marginally high. The same goes for the wage gap between males and females who find themselves performing equal value work in most cases. White workers continue to occupy high-level positions in an organisation with higher salaries disproportionately to black workers who generally occupy lower-level positions and with low-income earnings. The dawn of democracy brought a new government that has passed legislation and regulations aimed at reversing the ills of the past and achieving labour reforms and workplace equality. This paper evaluates progress as a result of such legislation and government policy provisions, particularly the Employment Equity Act. The study considers the provisions of section 6(4) of the EEA, which is aimed at race and gender pay income inequality, and the effects of section 27 of the EEA, which attempts to address disproportionate income differentials, by analysing data, and other observations and inputs from various sources. Based on the research and data, the findings point to the continued existence of wage differentials between races in South Africa. The conclusion is that the government's legislative intervention in the labour market through the Employment Equity Act has had a marginal economic impact on employees' wages and labour market transformation in the post-apartheid period. It is recommended that there is a need for a finetuned strategic approach to address both vertical and horizontal wage gap, further to this, the recommendations made by legislated bodies such as the Committee on Employment Equity need to be considered and implemented to achieve the goals as set up in the National Development Plan.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:07.214Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2022
publishDateRange 2022
publishDateSort 2022
publisher Department of Commercial Law
publisherStr Department of Commercial Law
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/35758 An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa Khewana, Xolile Collier, Debbie Labour Law The South African labour market has been characterised by income inequality, which emanates from past discrimination legacies. The wage gap between white workers and blacks have been marginally high. The same goes for the wage gap between males and females who find themselves performing equal value work in most cases. White workers continue to occupy high-level positions in an organisation with higher salaries disproportionately to black workers who generally occupy lower-level positions and with low-income earnings. The dawn of democracy brought a new government that has passed legislation and regulations aimed at reversing the ills of the past and achieving labour reforms and workplace equality. This paper evaluates progress as a result of such legislation and government policy provisions, particularly the Employment Equity Act. The study considers the provisions of section 6(4) of the EEA, which is aimed at race and gender pay income inequality, and the effects of section 27 of the EEA, which attempts to address disproportionate income differentials, by analysing data, and other observations and inputs from various sources. Based on the research and data, the findings point to the continued existence of wage differentials between races in South Africa. The conclusion is that the government's legislative intervention in the labour market through the Employment Equity Act has had a marginal economic impact on employees' wages and labour market transformation in the post-apartheid period. It is recommended that there is a need for a finetuned strategic approach to address both vertical and horizontal wage gap, further to this, the recommendations made by legislated bodies such as the Committee on Employment Equity need to be considered and implemented to achieve the goals as set up in the National Development Plan. 2022-02-18T09:51:44Z 2022-02-18T09:51:44Z 2021 2022-02-16T13:40:26Z Master Thesis Masters MPhil http://hdl.handle.net/11427/35758 eng application/pdf Department of Commercial Law Faculty of Law
spellingShingle Labour Law
Khewana, Xolile
An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa
thesis_degree_str Master's
title An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa
title_full An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa
title_fullStr An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa
title_full_unstemmed An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa
title_short An evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid South Africa
title_sort evaluation of race based income discrimination in post apartheid south africa
topic Labour Law
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/35758
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