The Inclusive Society Institute (ISI) did a presentation to a high-level Danish Delegation, on Thursday, 09 March at 6 Spin Street. The delegation included the Speaker of the Danish Parliament, Mr Søren Gade, the Ambassador to Denmark in South Africa, HE Mr Tobias Elling Rehfeld amongst others.
Ms Buyelwa Sonjica, Chairperson, of the Institute’s Advisory Council, opened the meeting with an introduction of the Institute.
Mr Daryl Swanepoel, the Institute’s CEO, did a presentation on, The People’s State of the Nation. The presentation was based on, a) the gloomy predictions for 2023 from the Ipsos Global Advisor, b) what worries the world in February 2023 with the focus on SA issues, c) Social cohesion in South Africa from the GoveDemPol, May 2022 highlighting governments performance on nation building d) political leaders and parties and trust in parties from the latest political poll results and e) providing context.
Mr Dave Strugnell, CEO at Percept, representing our research team did a presentation on the Understanding Youth Inequality report. His presentation focused on South Africa being widely regarded as the most unequal country on earth, where the top 20% of the population earned over 68% of income while the bottom 40% earned just 7% of income by January 2020. He discussed, the country’s inequality being multidimensional, transcending income and wealth to include matters of land, capital and access to quality public services, which illustrated that multidimensional inequality also intersects with gender, race and geography in ways that entrench historical fault lines.
There was a robust discussion during the Q & A session.