UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA (UNISA)
College of Human Sciences
⋄
DVA3701: ASSIGNMENT 4
Semester 1, 2026
⋄
Module Code: DVA3701
Module Name: Development Theory
Assignment No.: Assignment 4
Due Date: 17 April 2026
Semester: Semester 1, 2026
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for DVA3701: Development Theory
at the University of South Africa.
,UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in Contemporary South Africa
Introduction
Thirty years after the formal end of apartheid, South Africa remains among the most unequal
societies on earth. Its Gini coefficient, the standard measure of income disparity, consistently
ranks among the highest globally. More than half of the population lives below the upper-
bound poverty line. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, exceeds 40 percent.
These are not the incidental by-products of a developing economy still finding its feet; they
are, this essay argues, the predictable outcomes of structural conditions that stretch back
through apartheid and deeper into the colonial economy of the nineteenth century.
This essay engages those structural conditions through the analytical lenses of Marxist and
dependency theory. It proceeds in four parts. The first outlines the core arguments of Marx-
ism and dependency theory on poverty and development in an international context. The
second examines Arrighi, Aschoff and Scully’s (2010) account of how apartheid produced ac-
cumulation by dispossession as a specific developmental handicap. The third applies these
theoretical frameworks to explain the persistence of poverty in contemporary South Africa.
The fourth offers possible solutions, grounded in the same structural analysis, that could
begin to undo the conditions that produce and reproduce poverty.
Page 1 of 16
, UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in Contemporary South Africa
Marxist and Dependency Theory: Core Arguments on Poverty and Development
The Marxist Framework
Marxism explains poverty not as an accident of geography, culture, or individual failure but
as a structural outcome of capitalism. In Marx’s framework, capitalist production requires
a class of workers who own nothing but their labour power, and a class of capitalists who
own the means of production. Workers sell their labour, but the value they create exceeds
the wages they receive; the difference, what Marx called surplus value, is appropriated by
capital. This is not exploitation in a moral sense but a structural feature of how production
under capitalism is organised (Bull and Bøås, 2012).
For Marxists, poverty is therefore not a residual problem to be solved by more investment
or better policy. It is produced by capitalism itself, because capital accumulation requires
a labour force that is kept in a condition of relative need. The “reserve army of labour” de-
scribed by Marx serves a specific function: it disciplines employed workers by threatening
them with replacement and keeps wages from rising to the point where they would erode
profits. Poverty is, in this reading, not a failure of capitalism but one of its working parts.
Bull and Bøås (2012:319) situate this insight within development theory, noting that Marxist
approaches consistently challenge the idea that development is a benign or neutral process.
Development, from a Marxist standpoint, is the development of capitalism, which necessarily
produces uneven development: wealth and dynamism in some places, extraction and stag-
nation in others. The issue is not that poor countries lack development; it is that they have
experienced a specific form of development that serves the accumulation interests of capital.
Dependency Theory
Dependency theory shares Marxism’s structural orientation but focuses specifically on the
relationship between wealthy and poor countries rather than class relations within a single
society. Its central proposition is that underdevelopment is not a prior state that poor coun-
tries have not yet grown out of; it is a condition actively produced by their integration into the
global capitalist system on unfavourable terms.
Andre Gunder Frank’s articulation of this argument in the 1960s was influential: metropolitan
centres extract surplus from peripheral countries, and this transfer of wealth is the mech-
Page 2 of 16
College of Human Sciences
⋄
DVA3701: ASSIGNMENT 4
Semester 1, 2026
⋄
Module Code: DVA3701
Module Name: Development Theory
Assignment No.: Assignment 4
Due Date: 17 April 2026
Semester: Semester 1, 2026
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for DVA3701: Development Theory
at the University of South Africa.
,UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in Contemporary South Africa
Introduction
Thirty years after the formal end of apartheid, South Africa remains among the most unequal
societies on earth. Its Gini coefficient, the standard measure of income disparity, consistently
ranks among the highest globally. More than half of the population lives below the upper-
bound poverty line. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, exceeds 40 percent.
These are not the incidental by-products of a developing economy still finding its feet; they
are, this essay argues, the predictable outcomes of structural conditions that stretch back
through apartheid and deeper into the colonial economy of the nineteenth century.
This essay engages those structural conditions through the analytical lenses of Marxist and
dependency theory. It proceeds in four parts. The first outlines the core arguments of Marx-
ism and dependency theory on poverty and development in an international context. The
second examines Arrighi, Aschoff and Scully’s (2010) account of how apartheid produced ac-
cumulation by dispossession as a specific developmental handicap. The third applies these
theoretical frameworks to explain the persistence of poverty in contemporary South Africa.
The fourth offers possible solutions, grounded in the same structural analysis, that could
begin to undo the conditions that produce and reproduce poverty.
Page 1 of 16
, UNISA | DVA3701 Poverty in Contemporary South Africa
Marxist and Dependency Theory: Core Arguments on Poverty and Development
The Marxist Framework
Marxism explains poverty not as an accident of geography, culture, or individual failure but
as a structural outcome of capitalism. In Marx’s framework, capitalist production requires
a class of workers who own nothing but their labour power, and a class of capitalists who
own the means of production. Workers sell their labour, but the value they create exceeds
the wages they receive; the difference, what Marx called surplus value, is appropriated by
capital. This is not exploitation in a moral sense but a structural feature of how production
under capitalism is organised (Bull and Bøås, 2012).
For Marxists, poverty is therefore not a residual problem to be solved by more investment
or better policy. It is produced by capitalism itself, because capital accumulation requires
a labour force that is kept in a condition of relative need. The “reserve army of labour” de-
scribed by Marx serves a specific function: it disciplines employed workers by threatening
them with replacement and keeps wages from rising to the point where they would erode
profits. Poverty is, in this reading, not a failure of capitalism but one of its working parts.
Bull and Bøås (2012:319) situate this insight within development theory, noting that Marxist
approaches consistently challenge the idea that development is a benign or neutral process.
Development, from a Marxist standpoint, is the development of capitalism, which necessarily
produces uneven development: wealth and dynamism in some places, extraction and stag-
nation in others. The issue is not that poor countries lack development; it is that they have
experienced a specific form of development that serves the accumulation interests of capital.
Dependency Theory
Dependency theory shares Marxism’s structural orientation but focuses specifically on the
relationship between wealthy and poor countries rather than class relations within a single
society. Its central proposition is that underdevelopment is not a prior state that poor coun-
tries have not yet grown out of; it is a condition actively produced by their integration into the
global capitalist system on unfavourable terms.
Andre Gunder Frank’s articulation of this argument in the 1960s was influential: metropolitan
centres extract surplus from peripheral countries, and this transfer of wealth is the mech-
Page 2 of 16
