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Book Talk: The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil

Book Talk: The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil: Making Sense of Social Policy as Reparations, By Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri.

Book Talk: The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil: Making Sense of Social Policy as Reparations, Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri. Abstract: South Africa’s and Brazil’s social policies attempt to address the residues of institutional poverty, inequality, and unemployment. South Africa remains deeply unequal and polarized despite government commitments to undo centuries of social stratification resulting from colonial legacies and post-apartheid policy constraints. On the other hand, under the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT)—Workers’ Party, led government Brazil’s social assistance programmes like the Bolsa Familia was viewed as a model to reduce inequality to be emulated across most countries in the Global South. I answer the following questions: First, can social policy resolve the residuals and contradictions of transhistorical inequalities that have become systemic features of these aspirant democracies that aim to forge a new social contract under the epoch of a hierarchical racialised neoliberal capitalism? Second, what theoretical tools have those racialised as black deployed to imagine social policy as reparations? This book departs from the theoretical prism of studying welfare through the Eurocentric of the Welfare Regime Approach, rather proposes the view of thinking about social policy as reparations. Drawing from 90 in-depth interviewees I challenge hagiographic representations of social policies by centering the Black Radical Tradition and theorizing with my interlocutors, the beneficiaries of these countries’ social welfare regimes. I conclude that the commodification of social provisioning fails to challenge institutional legacies of anti-black racism which are foundational to citizenship in both South Africa and Brazil. The two countries offer a compelling comparison through shared histories of colonial domination, slavery, and anti-black racism. Thinking about social policy as reparations provides potent articulations of inaugurating a post-imperial world order.

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