Racial wage discrimination in South Africa before and after the first democratic election

Apartheid in South Africa was formally discarded by the first free election in 1994. Prior to 1994 discrimination in the labour market was embodied in a number of policies (pass laws, occupational colour barring etc.). While such polices may be eliminated by the ANC government, it is apparent that the elimination of racial wage discrimination altogether will be a lengthy process. In the present paper, racial wage discrimination is treated via a multilateral wage decomposition technique. Each observed wage differential is broken down into a productivity component and a discrimination component so that the extent of racial wage discrimination can be estimated