ABSTRACT
Recently, the Rhodes Must Fall protests, a precursor to the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States of America and elsewhere, drew attention to the legacy of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. The standing statues of Cecil John Rhodes, the quintessential colonialist in Southern Africa, including Zambia (Northern Rhodesia), Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia), and Malawi (Nyasaland), were only a symptom of the main disease, which is the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Destroying the statues of Rhodes is a symbol of what the protesters actually want, namely, the eradication of the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid as represented by social, economic, and political inequality. South Africa is the most economically unequal society in the world. It has the highest Gini coefficient, 63%, in the world. In the Gini Index, a coefficient of 0% represents perfect equality, while a coefficient of 100% represents perfect inequality. The Gini coefficient is a spectrum of 0 and 1. 0 represents perfect equality, that is, everyone is at the same level of income. 1 represents perfect inequality, that is, one person receives all the income while others receive none. In order to resolve the problem of inequality in South Africa, we need a distributive justice doctrine that, when applied to South Africa, is simultaneously a theoretically plausible, practicably possible, and morally reasonable political doctrine. This approach is by no means exhaustive; it is only representative of the possible avenues we can explore. Nevertheless, it suffices for its purpose.
