Why SA desperately needs a middle class beyond the state to realise growth aims

22 October 2017 - 00:00 By Jason Musyoka

The middle classes seem to have  stolen the thunder from the working classes in South Africa, and Karl Marx's dream of a socialist revolution seems out of sight.
During South Africa's liberation struggle, it was the working classes, and not the middle classes, who demanded a democratic revolution.
In fact, as some scholars have suggested, for South Africa, we might rightly conclude that the 20th century was a working-class century.
By the turn of the century, the black working class rapidly moved out of the economic shadows mainly into the state - and here they transformed their lifestyles to a middle-class kind.
South Africa was not alone in this change.
In the rest of Africa during the second half of the centurythere was a significant shift as the working class submitted to middle-class leadership.
Thus, liberation leaders such as Tanzania's Julius Nyerere held an MAfrom the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Nelson Mandela was a practising lawyer, Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda was a qualified teacher, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta held a postgraduate qualification from the London School of Economics, and in the Congo, Patrice Lumumba was a postal clerk before he got involved in politics.The list goes on.
In the new century, here in South Africa, the working class (which seems more comfortable within the nationalist left), follows a racial justice logic while the middle class is increasingly linked to a growth agenda.
The more the black middle classes consume, it is argued, the higher the growth.
But the world over, the debate on how the middle classes relate to growth is somewhat superficial and, in some cases, mismatched.
For the most part, in developed countries, economic growth is seen as caused by the middle classes.
This same thinking is increasingly applied in developing countries, even though the confusion surrounding this linear logic is glaring.
For example, not much growth is expected from Europe and North America, because the size of the middle classes is declining in these regions.
Ironically the size of the middle classes in sub-Saharan  Africa is expected to remain small, and yet roaring growth is expected.
India's economy has slowed down even though the size of its middle classes is expected to increase...

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