SA Inequality Report Growing levels of inequality in South Africa have undermined working class solidarity that is central to a free, fair and equal society. Inequality has fragmented South Africa#s working class in a variety of ways.

It has pitted the permanent worker against the outsourced and casualised worker; the union worker against the non-unionised worker; the migrant against the #citizen#; unemployed youths against the employed, men against womxn the list goes on.

One the greatest blows to the tradition of alliance movement or whatis termed the congress moment in SA is the implosion of the radical trade union movement in South Africa. And its implosion was achieved through its demobilisation and co-option by the ruling elite.

These fragmentations are not merely an outcome of inequality, they are indeed a strategy of accumulation that has been mobilised through neoliberalism in its form as ideology, culture, mode of capitalist accumulation and political practice. In the light of this, Oxfam South Africa approach to fight against inequality has fourstrategic goals:

1) We want to change the terms of the debate with respect to how inequality is framed in South Africa. The persistence of economic inequality in the SA mainstream view (policy and academia), is framed as a consequence of labour market rigidities/ labour market inflexibility to hire and fire workers. This mainstream view recommends that the labour market must be deregulated, and all that is required are public goods. The OZA view is that inequality arises out of and is functional to the structure of the South African economy characterised by highly capital intensive industrial structure, de-industrialisation, highly concentration of the economy, financialisation of the economy such that growth is based on speculation rather than long term investment. While public goods are essential to improving the labour market, the failures in the labour market are a mere expression to this exploitative structure.

Meeting Goal 1: This project will supportthe production of an Inequality report. The theme of the report is women and work and looks at how the structure of the economy functions to reproduce labour market inequalities and gender inequality through the purview of race, class and gender. This isbecause wage inequality is a key driver on income inequality. Some specific topics or sectors covered are: unpaid care work, precarious workers, informal sector, unemployment, sexual harassment at the workplace, financialisation, labour legislation, industrial policy, state-business corruption, fiscal and macroeconomic policy etc.


2) Our goal is to support collective action, movement building and effective alliances within civil society (including academia) through political education and campaigns that are aimed at fighting inequality and influencing and shaping policy towards progressive outcomes.

Meeting Goal 2: We used the development of the report as a movement building exercise involving 15 social movements (trade unions, informal sector traders, unemployed peoples movement including the Fight Inequality Alliance) and academics to co-create the development of thereport with us from conceptualisation, development and implementation. We will continue to do this through when we launch the report through inequality stockvels or road shows that will be organised with our partners across the country.

3) Our goal is to imbed feminist principles and gender justice to economic justice.

Meeting Goal 3: The report is a feminist analysis of inequality, and social movements are mainly womxn, and feminist participatory practices have been used in the development of the report. Importantly, it is a big addition to the feminist movement in South Africa. The current movement only focuses on Gender Based Violence, which is important given that SA has the highest femicide rates in the world. But missing from the discussion of violence is how structural violence in the form of economic inequality and power is a form of gender based violence.

4) Leveraging Oxfam#s global footprint by connecting local struggles to the regional and global campaigns