Cash crunch: 63% of SA is feeling the pinch

South Africans are facing a daily struggle to survive, with 63% experiencing a cash crunch and 41% without access to clean water during the past year. 

More than two thirds (67.4%) of South Africans feel that their financial situation has either stayed the same or deteriorated compared with the previous year. 

These are among the findings of a new briefing paper of the SA Reconciliation Barometer for 2015. It was released by the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation today. 

The deep inequities from apartheid remain, with black South Africans reporting the highest incidences of deprivation overall. The report also noted that white South Africans have the largest average household income – R387 011 compared with R69 632 among black South Africans. 

Other findings of the briefing paper, which focused on perceptions of economic security and wellbeing and which noted the impact of the current bleak economic climate, include: 

• More than half (54%) feel that their financial situation will remain unchanged in 2016; 
• 30% indicated that at some point during the past year they didn’t have food to eat; 
• Almost a quarter (24.5%) said that their economic situation has deteriorated since democracy in 1994, with another third (35.3%) noting that their economic circumstances have remain unchanged; 
• 36.5% feel that income inequality has either worsened since 1994, while 30.8% felt that it had stayed the same; and 
• Indian respondents were the most optimistic about their economic security, while coloured respondents were the most pessimistic. 

Source: SA Reconciliation Barometer 2015

The Institute of Justice and Reconciliation concluded that reconciliation had little chance of succeeding while deep inequalities persisted. 

In spite of political changes since 1994, the “economic legacy remains in the shape of a deeply unequal society in which extreme poverty and affluence coexist uncomfortably in close proximity”. 

More than two thirds of respondents felt they had little or no trust in South Africans of other racial groups, the Barometer reported at the end of last year. The majority identified the gap between rich and poor as the most divisive aspect of society that hampers efforts at reconciliation.