Overview

Explores how anticolonial movements in South Africa enabled enduring inequality through the rise of privileged minorities and exclusive economic advantages In Privileged Minorities, Mesrob Vartavarian examines a central paradox in South African history: how a nation shaped by anticolonial struggle became fertile ground for wealth concentration and enduring inequality. While these contradictions are not unique to South Africa, its historical trajectory offers broader insights into persistent disparities across African societies. Vartavarian argues that the rise of privileged minorities-small, exclusive groups that dominate political and economic life-paralleled the development of successful anticolonial movements. These minorities secured exclusive advantages, defined as benefits and protections that enabled material accumulation. Such advantages included land seizures, racialized labor systems, access to coercive institutions, favorable regulatory environments, and targeted state expenditures. Though these mechanisms could foster overall economic growth, they disproportionately benefited select oligarchies and middle classes. The book traces how distinct sociocultural groups in South Africa navigated and negotiated these advantages from the Dutch colonial era through the rise and decline of African National Congress rule. Rather than dismantling minority privilege, challenges from marginalized groups often served to reshape entrenched advantages by incorporating new actors into existing structures. These dynamics produced composite systems of accumulation that sustained inequality. Through this historical lens, Privileged Minorities offers a compelling framework for understanding how structural advantage persists and evolves, even in the wake of liberation.

Full Product Details

9780821426753

Table of Contents

Reviews

""As the inordinate power of oligarchies in contemporary politics captures global concern, this erudite, accessible book is more than timely. Mesrob Vartavarian makes a cogent case for the disproportionate role of privileged minorities in perpetuating inequality in South Africa before, during, and after colonialism-a role inadequately explained by race or class alone."" - Jean Comaroff, Harvard University ""Privileged Minorities reads like a breath of fresh air in the historiography of South Africa. Reminiscent in its overarching theorizing and broad time span of some of the best work of the 1970s and 1980s, the book reflects Mesrob Vartavarian's insights into South African history as a relative newcomer not inhibited by old and ingrained habits. Stimulating in ambition and challenging in interpretation, Privileged Minorities will be welcomed by all scholars of Africa and of economic inequality in the global economy."" - William H. Worger, University of California, Los Angeles ""Privileged Minorities presents an original and fresh perspective on South African history focusing on the negotiations between small political elites and wealthy corporate powers rather than on racial or class politics. In concise and accessible language, Mesrob Vartavarian argues that these elites have built their own economic base while leaving South Africa’s working majority behind. The book is an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the causes of South Africa’s deteriorating situation."" - Nancy L. Clark, Louisiana State University ""The extremely unequal distribution of wealth in South Africa is finally getting the attention it deserves. Eschewing simplistic explanations, Mesrob Vartavarian brilliantly traces political developments over more than three hundred years to show how successive privileged elites (both black and white) have monopolized the accumulation of wealth through dispossession, exploitation and state power."" - Jeremy Seekings, University of Cape Town

Author Information

Mesrob Vartavarian has published extensively on the formation and evolution of power elites in the Global South. He has held research fellowships and teaching positions at Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of California San Diego. He is currently a consultant at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available