Bloomberg View: South Africa's Brewing Class War

With the world’s largest reserves of more than a dozen minerals, South Africa is not about to run out of riches. Yet the unrest rumbling through its mining industry reflects the deepening failure of Africa’s largest economy, almost two decades after the end of apartheid, to tap its natural wealth for the lasting benefit of all its citizens.

South Africa’s mining industry, which generates nearly one-tenth of its gross domestic product and half its foreign exchange and provides about 500,000 jobs, has been hit hard by slowing demand from China and Europe. (The price of platinum, for example, which is used in catalytic converters for cars, slumped with sluggish auto sales in Europe.) But the country’s economic problems go well beyond that. Unemployment, now at 25 percent, has not dipped below 22 percent since 2000; the level of inequality, as measured by South Africa’s Gini coefficient, is worse now than at the end of apartheid.