The only way to truly tackle inequality is to generate economic growth, which creates jobs, brings more people into the working class, and helps established households migrate into the middle-income segment.
There is no magic wand. But some politically unpalatable decisions do have to be taken that will allow skilled migrants into the country, control the immigration of unskilled people, and, horror of horrors, encourage the creation of small businesses by easing some of the policy restrictions to make life easier for start-ups to, well, start up.
South Africa's regulatory regime was designed for large corporations, but for small businesses of a certain size, say with turnovers of R10m, R20m or R50m, the requirements can be offputting.
The upside of that complexity for incumbents is that it keeps competition out as it discourages rivals.
That too creates an ever-larger chasm between those who have and those who do not. Unless South Africa can think fundamentally differently about its inequality crisis, it is condemning future generations to more of the same, with potentially disastrous consequences.
South Africa's economy is dominated by large corporates and conglomerates. Beyond a few notable exceptions, they don't grow by creating jobs; they grow through productivity gains. Because these large companies have established a dominant position in a concentrated range of industries, they make it hard for anyone else to break in, and as a result we have a situation where there is jobless growth.
South Africa has one of the lowest levels of social mobility on earth. If you are born poor and live in one of the country's many sprawling townships, you are more than likely to die there in similar economic circumstances. In the same way, if you are born into privilege and play by the rules, you are likely to remain better off.
The skewed ownership of assets as well as the skewed engagement of people in jobs means that your odds of changing your fate are small.
Tragically, inspiring stories of young people who grew up in poor households and managed to rise to the upper echelons of business are rare. They exist, but they are not common.
What can be done? Over the past decade the government has attempted to roll out the developmental state but it has failed lamentably. FirstRand chairman Roger Jardine, once the youngest director-general when he ran the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in the Mandela years, wrote in his 2019 chairman's statement: "Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that a South African developmental state for the twenty-first century must strongly position the private sector as a key partner to the state in the industrial transformation of our country."
Jardine might have been (metaphorically) burnt at the stake for such heresy five years ago, but there is now growing acceptance that the government cannot go it alone and needs help. The brutal reality is that you do not create economic opportunity in a vacuum. Jobs are the result of a productive environment in which smart people are incentivised to risk capital in order to grow enterprises that do create jobs.
If the overall environment is not conducive to growth, jobs are impossible to create.
"We need to stop obsessing or even fussing about ownership of companies," says the economist Dr Adrian Saville, CEO of Cannon Asset Managers. "It doesn't matter who owns a company. The only question is, does this company have the capacity to sustain itself to do something productive? What I mean by that is that it can be foreign owned, domestic owned, it can be publicly owned, it can be privately owned, it can be listed or unlisted. It could be part of a conglomerate, it could be a stand-alone, it could be family owned: ownership really doesn't matter. The question that we have to put first is: is this a viable entity? And if it's a viable entity, you now have the prospect of establishing employment inside that viable entity."
International research shows time and time again that it is the smaller companies that create jobs. According to studies undertaken by Cannon Asset Managers over a 20-year period, the largest companies on the JSE created very few jobs while the smaller firms had a considerable multiplier effect on employment.
The problem is that there are just too few of them. The government regularly pays lip service to the notion of people starting their own businesses. Considering the bureaucratic red tape involved in getting a company registered, and a host of compliance and regulatory issues that demand attention, it's a wonder small businesses ever start, never mind grow.
The economist Xhanti Payi, who runs his own consultancy, Nascence Advisory, once told me: "Telling young people that the solution to their unemployment is to build their own business is nothing more than a cruel hoax."
It's a damning criticism of an economic system that lets young people down at every turn. Even considering that in healthy start-up markets the vast majority of businesses will fail within five years, Payi's criticisms appear well founded.
• 'The Upside of Down' is published by Pan Macmillan and is available as an e-book until stores reopen
