Forthcoming book on the racial wealth divide in Britain and South Africa

The publishing arm of the London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Press, has agreed to print an exciting and innovative book by authors from LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, ACEIR’s South Africa node at the University of Cape Town, and campaigning groups in the UK and South Africa. 

The book, due for release in 2026, will be titled ‘Colonial pasts and inequality today: The racial wealth divide in Britain and South Africa’. 

Focusing especially on huge divides between racial groups, the book considers why there are increasingly extreme divisions of wealth; whether these are inevitable; and how they can be challenged. The authors link current affairs to longer term imperial histories when groups, by racialising others, made white people (or white adjacents) the historical beneficiaries of wealth extraction.
 

White populations have disproportionately benefitted from the recent value increase in historically accumulated assets. As wealth divides intensify, so too are racialised divides. 

The book brings together innovative studies scoping out the significance of the racial wealth divide in South Africa and the UK using original data sources, along with essays that foreground the experiential aspects across different racialised communities. A major feature of the publication is drawing together voices from campaigning work with high quality social scientific research so that this will become a major reference point.

The book is edited by Shabna Begum (Runnymede Trust); LSE’s Babette May, Adèle Oliver, Annalena Oppel (all at the International Inequalities Institute); ACEIR South Africa’s Vimal Ranchhod (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, UCT); and long-term research partner of SALDRU and ACEIR affiliate, Mike Savage (LSE).