Putting golf club needs before social housing is one way the rich fail the poor

With sex and religion, South Africans don’t like talking about their annual income. We thus often have wildly incorrect estimates of what other people earn and where we fit in the income distribution.

To be in the top 1% in 2015 you needed to have an annual taxable income of R1m or more, making you one of only 350,000 South Africans . That’s according to Ingrid Woolard’s analysis of anonymised SA Revenue Service tax data for her 2019 inaugural lecture at Stellenbosch University, in which she showed that since 2003 the incomes of the top 5% have consistently grown faster than everyone else’s in SA, and especially that of the poor.

For God’s sake, there are 23 other golf courses and driving ranges in Cape Town and another one literally next door: the King David Mowbray Golf Club Some of these are complicated initiatives that involve long-term appointments, policy reform, and court cases, but even when they don’t the political will is lacking. The most recent and visceral example of this is Cape Town’s indefensible decision to renew the 10-year lease of the Rondebosch Golf Club rather than use it for social housing.

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