Speaking at the United Nations in New York this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We [South Africa] recently launched the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality, chaired by Nobel laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz…The Committee will develop the first-ever official G20 paper on global inequality.”

South Africa is often described as the one of the world’s most unequal societies. What is often read as inequality in South Africa is in fact a consequence of the country’s very high rate of unemployment that has arisen from its low rates of capital investment and economic growth. Investor and other surveys reveal that South African government policy in areas ranging from property rights to empowerment increases the cost of doing business in the country and thereby decreases its attractiveness to investors.

The political consequences of maintaining low rates of economic growth have grown increasingly stark in South Africa and are widely held as key contributing factors to the African National Congress, the party Ramaphosa leads, surrendering its political majority in elections last year.