Visions of Society: Peasants, Workers and the Unemployed in a Changing South Africa

Using the concept of mediated class position, a class status is allocated to households according to the class position of the main income earner. The results show that the mapping between income and class is predictable, but uneven. The unemployed are concentrated amongst the poorest households. As smallholder agriculture is negligible, it makes no sense to categorise South Africa as a society of peasants. While there may be scope for the expansion of smallholder production, even a major process of land reform would be unlikely to transform the overall social structure. There is more supportive evidence for two alternative ’visions’ of society, namely South Africa as a ’society of workers’, and South Africa as encompassing a massive underclass of households that are systematically disadvantaged in the labour and other markets.