Did the End of Apartheid Spell the Beginning of the End for the Racial Wage Hierarchy in South Africa? a Multilateral Analysis of Racial Wage Differentials in the Early Post-apartheid Period

The South African apartheid system formally ended with the election of the African National Congress at the first all-race elections held in 1994. As a result, racist policies such as color barring, that particularly hindered the advancement of black workers throughout the apartheid period are no longer legal. Yet the legacy of apartheid may endure as a result of both the persistence of racial differences in human capital attributes and the possible continuation of discriminatory practices within employment. In this paper we examine the evolution of the racial wage hierarchy in the early post-apartheid era against the background of the long-term decline in racial wage disparities observed over the latter years of the apartheid regime. We find evidence that the position of black workers between 1995 and 1997 actually deteriorated relative to the overall geometric mean wage, while that of colored, asian and white workers improved.