THE chief executive officer of the National African Federation Chamber of Commerce has slammed as ?misleading? a report that black South Africans will earn more than whites for the first time this financial year, saying it gives the false impression that blacks are approaching economic parity with whites.
“Forget about the figures – the black elite are suffocating in overdraft, unlike whites who have a wealth support structure decades old,” Sabelo Macingwane told the Sunday Times. “The wealth of the country remains in white hands.?
Black South Africans on average earn roughly one rand for every seven earned by their minority white counterparts, the Sunday Times reported.
Citing research by the University of South Africa (Unisa), the paper said however that the black majority workforce earned 43.4% of the country’s net income of R604bn last year, slightly more than the total earned by whites.
“This is a milestone, although most people will be surprised that it has not already happened because of the absolute numbers of people in each group,” the deputy chairman of Standard Bank, Saki Macozoma, told the newspaper.
In 1960, under apartheid, white South Africans earned three times more than blacks. Last year 77% of the population were still earning less than whites, who comprise about 12% of the population.
The study by Unisa’s Bureau of Market Research also found that the black elite has more than doubled its income to R13.5bn in five years.
Macozoma said: “It is critical for the future of South Africa that the people at the bottom end move up this graph from now on … the black elite is taking the lion’s share of the changes in terms of redistribution of wealth.”
The research also showed a steep income rise for Indians during the 1990s and a steady increase for the mixed-race Coloured population, to just below eight percent by 2000.
But this year for the first time the country’s black population will earn slightly more than whites, the bureau predicted.
Bureau research director Helgard van Wyk confirmed that the “new black elite” in high posts were earning about R300_000 a year. He said 23% of the richest South Africans were now black. – AFP