South Africa's Inequality: Can Ramaphosa Lead Change at the G20 Summit?

Isaac Mpho Mogotsi

Is President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa the inequality slayer or the inequality poster child?

Five years ago the Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies revealed that a massive 15% of South Africa’s total wealth is owned by just 3 500 people, or 0,01% of South Africa’s total population and that the top 10% (3, 5 million people) control a massive, unimaginable 86% of the country’s wealth, whilst the bottom 90% (31,8 million people) control and share in the residual, pitiful and meagre 14% of the country’s wealth. (See iol.co.za, article titled “Striking study reveals 15% of SA’s wealth is in hands of only 3 500 people.”)

Earlier, on 29 March 2025, Forbes published an article titled "Africa’s Billionaires Are Richer Than Ever," where it stated that Africa’s second-richest billionaire is Johann Rupert. It further noted that South Africa, the most unequal country on the planet, led Africa’s billionaire pack with seven billionaires, all listed as white South Africans except for Patrice Motsepe, whereas Nigeria’s four billionaires on the list were all black, a testament to the failure of successive ANC governments to transform South Africa’s economy.

It came as a surprise to learn that President Ramaphosa has set up a G20 Committee of Extraordinary Experts on Global Inequality to produce a report on global inequality for the G20 Summit to be held in November this year in South Africa.

Is the G20 Committee of Extraordinary Experts Ramaphosa’s last dead cat bounce as power starts to flow out of his fingers and his political legacy looks pretty underwhelming, to say the least?

There is no shortage of very well-researched global studies into global inequality. In fact global inequality has become a sort of a global cottage industry for global researchers and pontificating politicians and policy makers, whilst globally only China (outside the Nordic countries) has surpassed in massively reducing both poverty and inequality, with Botswana, Brazil, Mauritius, Russia, the Gulf countries and to some extend India in recent times registering very impressive gains as well.

In 2009, the current Bangladesh Prime Minister, Mohammed Yunus, delivered the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in which he called on South African leaders to set an example to the world by reducing the level of poverty and inequality in the shortest possible time.

Earlier in 2004, Robert Guest, in his book The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives, had held out the inspiring hope that post-apartheid South Africa would assume the role of leading the African flying geese formation into unheard-of economic prosperity the way Japan had done for East Asian economies.

To quote Robert Guest:“South Africa is Africa’s best hope. It has by far the continent’s best and most sophisticated economy. If South Africa prospers, it could pull the rest of the continent in its wake, like Japan did in Asia.” (Smithsonian Books, 2004, page 220)

That has proven to be a forlorn hope indeed.Not only has South Africa’s economy stagnated for two decades in a row now and other African economies powered ahead, all its bad national indices have shot through the roof, whilst African countries like Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Senegal, Mauritius, Botswana, Morocco, Egypt, Angola and even Burkina Faso and Niger are powering ahead, albeit that many of them are starting from a lower base.

Some of the best and most inspired researched studies on global inequality have come from both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Perhaps two global institutions that have done the most in the last several decades to cause and entrench global inequality through their austerity programmes, prove that those studying inequality are not necessarily committed to eradicating poverty and inequality, nor do they see poverty and inequality, as Nelson Mandela did, as being akin to slavery and apartheid. (Nelson Mandela’s Address at Trafalgar Square, London, 2005)

In 2019, the World Bank Blogs site published a paper by Zia Quresh titled “Addressing rising inequality in G20 economies.”

However, inequality in G20 economies keeps on going up, not down. Papers on inequality that have also come out of the IMF have been of the highest quality and often breaking new ground in terms of avant-garde thinking on the subject, such as the IMF paper on inequality in South Africa of 30 January 2020 titled “Six Charts Explain South Africa’s Inequality.”

That IMF paper stated that inequality in South Africa has remained stubbornly high.There are also exhaustive research studies by various organisations of the United Nations (UN) into global inequality.

For example, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals list as Goal 10: Reduce Inequality within and among countries.And then there was a global elite frenzy when the celebrated and celebrity French author Thomas Piketty released his monumental book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which addressed global inequality.

Piketty even cracked an invitation to address the 2015 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in which he condemned South Africa’s extreme levels of inequality and warned that South Africa’s great political progress remains imperilled by these extreme income inequalities. (See Guardian, UK, article of 6 October 2013 under the title “Black economic empowerment has failed’: Piketty on South African inequality”)

So what is new and compelling that will be discovered by the report of Ramaphosa’s G20 Global Inequality Extraordinary Expert Committee?

The simple answer is: Not much.The real dangers of the failure by governments and policy makers around the world, including in South Africa, to address global inequality were laid bare by the American billionaire Bridgewater Associates CEO and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio when he recently stated in an interview with the UK Financial Times of 2 September that wealth inequalities and eroded trust in public institutions are key drivers of the backslide towards authoritarianism across the world, especially in the USA under President Trump.

* Isaac Mpho Mogotsi, Founder & Executive Chairman, Centre for Economic Diplomacy in Africa (CEDIA)

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.