As an economy grows, especially when the growth spurt is both intense and drawn out, structural changes happen to it. Its consumption patterns change — an increasingly wealthy workforce is now able to afford more expensive “white goods-type” purchases. Depending on how open the economy is, investments in buildings and machinery occur designed to supply these new demands. Otherwise, the import bill for these fancy purchases simply go up.
That is until it runs out of room — either because the growth model runs out of juice, or external and internal shocks upset the trend. At which point, job losses, rising prices, etc. begin to impoverish economic participants. The new negative trends impact more adversely at the famed “bottom of the pyramid”. And it is only a matter of time before the main response to the resulting pain is for “natives” to blame “non-natives” for stealing their jobs. In the U.S.
In South Africa, this conversation has been no different. Except that the end of apartheid there appeared to have promised far more to the people than successive governments have had the nous or the capacity to deliver. The failure of leaders there to deliver the El Dorado that the people were due if first they sought the freedoms of self-rule only exacerbates the sense of inequality natural in dire economic circumstances.