Today's twin problems of poverty and inequality, and the dramatic growth in
crime and violence, are legacies of the past 30 years of apartheid that confront South
Africa. They affect social and economic development, nationwide: Investors are reluctant
to risk their capital, health and police costs are high, and mortality and morbidity rates
are greater than they would otherwise be. As elsewhere, violence deepens the poverty of
the majority, African population because it erodes their assets, as did apartheid's spatial
and labor policies, for three generations.
This paper examines the complex interrelationship between the violence-povertyapartheid
nexus. Using secondary data, it provides a brief historical analysis of how
apartheid policy, as well as the struggle against it, affected the assets of the poor--
particularly household relations and social capital. The paper's recommendations are
intended to assist in designing interventions that promote opportunities, as well as
remove constraints that prevent the poor from using their assets more productively, and
thereby reduce levels of violence and poverty.
Over the long-term, apartheid systematically imposed a range of labor, welfare
and spatial policies: Under the guise of 'separate development,' it not only discriminated
against the Black population economically, politically and socially, but also produced
and reproduced severe levels of poverty and violence.
The paper analyzes a nexus linking poverty, violence and the legacy of apartheid
policy. An understanding of each of these three issues and they way they are interrelated
and mutually reinforcing, is necessary to design interventions capable of breaking the
cycle. In examining the links, it must be recognized that poverty relates not only to
income, but also to 'vulnerability,' and both are closely tied to ownership of assets: The
more assets held by individuals, households and communities, and the better they are
managed, the less vulnerable they are. Conversely, the more the assets are eroded, the
greater the level of insecurity and poverty