UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
College of Human Sciences
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
DVA3701: Development Theory
Assignment 4 — Semester 1, 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
DVA3701
Module Code:
Development Theory
Module Name:
Enduring Poverty in Contemporary
Essay Topic:
South Africa
Assignment 4
Assignment Number:
17 April 2026
Due Date:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for Development Theory (DVA3701) — UNISA 2026
,UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in South Africa – Assignment 4
Introduction
Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most unequal so-
cieties on earth. More than half of the population lives below the upper-bound poverty line,
unemployment consistently exceeds 30 per cent when measured broadly, and the Gini coef-
ficient has remained stubbornly above 0.60, making the country a persistent outlier in global
comparisons of income distribution (Statistics South Africa, 2022). These are not the out-
comes of a natural disaster or a transient economic shock. They are the product of historical
processes that Marxist and dependency theorists have spent decades attempting to explain,
and they have deepened through the post-apartheid era in ways that both theoretical tradi-
tions predicted.
This essay critically discusses the enduring nature of poverty in contemporary South Africa.
It does so in two stages. Part (a) examines the Marxist and dependency theory explanations
for poverty, first in general international context and then, with particular attention to Arrighi,
Aschoff and Scully (2010) and Bond (2013), as applied to South Africa. Part (b) suggests
possible solutions to this enduring poverty, drawing on both the theoretical critiques and the
specific structural conditions of the South African political economy.
Page 2 of 18
, UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in South Africa – Assignment 4
Marxist and Dependency Theory: Views on Development and Poverty
1.1 The Marxist Framework
Marxism locates the cause of poverty in the structure of capitalist production rather than in
the failings of individuals or in cultural deficiencies. At its core, the Marxist account holds that
capitalism requires the separation of direct producers from the means of production: land,
tools, machines, and capital. Once this separation is achieved, workers have no choice but
to sell their labour power to those who own the means of production. The wage they receive
represents only a portion of the value they create; the remainder is extracted as surplus value,
which is the source of profit and the engine of capital accumulation (Bull and Boas, 2012).
This structural relationship makes poverty not an accident but a systemic requirement. A re-
serve army of unemployed workers, in Marx’s original formulation, disciplines employed work-
ers by suppressing wages and enabling employers to replace dissatisfied workers. Poverty,
from this perspective, is produced and reproduced as a functional feature of capitalist ac-
cumulation, not as a residual problem to be cleaned up at the margins. Marx’s concept of
primitive accumulation describes the historical process by which populations were violently
dispossessed of their land and livelihoods, creating the conditions for capitalist production by
forcing them into the labour market (Arrighi, Aschoff and Scully, 2010).
At the international level, Marxist political economists from Rosa Luxemburg through Lenin
and into the contemporary period have argued that capitalism’s drive to accumulate leads
inevitably to imperialism: the extension of capitalist social relations, through force if neces-
sary, into territories where non-capitalist forms of production still exist. This expansion is not
charity or development assistance; it is the appropriation of new territories, resources, and
labour forces to sustain profitability in the core (Bull and Boas, 2012). The poverty of periph-
eral countries is, on this account, not a stage of underdevelopment to be overcome with the
right policies; it is a condition actively produced and maintained by the structure of the world
capitalist system.
1.2 Dependency Theory
Dependency theory emerged primarily from Latin American scholars in the 1960s and 1970s,
most prominently Andre Gunder Frank and later Samir Amin, as a direct challenge to moderni-
sation theory’s assumption that underdevelopment was simply a prior stage of development
Page 3 of 18
College of Human Sciences
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
DVA3701: Development Theory
Assignment 4 — Semester 1, 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
DVA3701
Module Code:
Development Theory
Module Name:
Enduring Poverty in Contemporary
Essay Topic:
South Africa
Assignment 4
Assignment Number:
17 April 2026
Due Date:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for Development Theory (DVA3701) — UNISA 2026
,UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in South Africa – Assignment 4
Introduction
Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most unequal so-
cieties on earth. More than half of the population lives below the upper-bound poverty line,
unemployment consistently exceeds 30 per cent when measured broadly, and the Gini coef-
ficient has remained stubbornly above 0.60, making the country a persistent outlier in global
comparisons of income distribution (Statistics South Africa, 2022). These are not the out-
comes of a natural disaster or a transient economic shock. They are the product of historical
processes that Marxist and dependency theorists have spent decades attempting to explain,
and they have deepened through the post-apartheid era in ways that both theoretical tradi-
tions predicted.
This essay critically discusses the enduring nature of poverty in contemporary South Africa.
It does so in two stages. Part (a) examines the Marxist and dependency theory explanations
for poverty, first in general international context and then, with particular attention to Arrighi,
Aschoff and Scully (2010) and Bond (2013), as applied to South Africa. Part (b) suggests
possible solutions to this enduring poverty, drawing on both the theoretical critiques and the
specific structural conditions of the South African political economy.
Page 2 of 18
, UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in South Africa – Assignment 4
Marxist and Dependency Theory: Views on Development and Poverty
1.1 The Marxist Framework
Marxism locates the cause of poverty in the structure of capitalist production rather than in
the failings of individuals or in cultural deficiencies. At its core, the Marxist account holds that
capitalism requires the separation of direct producers from the means of production: land,
tools, machines, and capital. Once this separation is achieved, workers have no choice but
to sell their labour power to those who own the means of production. The wage they receive
represents only a portion of the value they create; the remainder is extracted as surplus value,
which is the source of profit and the engine of capital accumulation (Bull and Boas, 2012).
This structural relationship makes poverty not an accident but a systemic requirement. A re-
serve army of unemployed workers, in Marx’s original formulation, disciplines employed work-
ers by suppressing wages and enabling employers to replace dissatisfied workers. Poverty,
from this perspective, is produced and reproduced as a functional feature of capitalist ac-
cumulation, not as a residual problem to be cleaned up at the margins. Marx’s concept of
primitive accumulation describes the historical process by which populations were violently
dispossessed of their land and livelihoods, creating the conditions for capitalist production by
forcing them into the labour market (Arrighi, Aschoff and Scully, 2010).
At the international level, Marxist political economists from Rosa Luxemburg through Lenin
and into the contemporary period have argued that capitalism’s drive to accumulate leads
inevitably to imperialism: the extension of capitalist social relations, through force if neces-
sary, into territories where non-capitalist forms of production still exist. This expansion is not
charity or development assistance; it is the appropriation of new territories, resources, and
labour forces to sustain profitability in the core (Bull and Boas, 2012). The poverty of periph-
eral countries is, on this account, not a stage of underdevelopment to be overcome with the
right policies; it is a condition actively produced and maintained by the structure of the world
capitalist system.
1.2 Dependency Theory
Dependency theory emerged primarily from Latin American scholars in the 1960s and 1970s,
most prominently Andre Gunder Frank and later Samir Amin, as a direct challenge to moderni-
sation theory’s assumption that underdevelopment was simply a prior stage of development
Page 3 of 18
