Unpicking inequality in South Africa

JOHNNY MILLER, a photographer, began taking drone footage of South African cities in 2016. Shots from Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg depict adjoining neighbourhoods—but different worlds. On one side of a photograph might be a verdant suburb spattered with azure swimming pools; on the other a slum with tightly packed shacks.

Economic research into South African inequality has produced a less granular picture. Reports from the World Bank and other bodies draw on benchmark measures of income inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, to conclude that South Africa is one of the world’s most unequal countries. But they often say little about wealth, the role of government policy or, crucially, what has happened to the gap between blacks and whites since the end of apartheid in 1994.