South Africa and Sri Lanka may have left apartheid and civil war behind, but persistent inequality suggests the fight for justice is far from over. Both countries share a legacy of deep, painful conflict, and in its aftermath, they share a pursuit for reconciliation. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Sri Lanka’s multiple, smaller transitional justice initiatives under the UNHRC Resolution 30/1 (2015) reflect each country’s endeavour to address past racial or ethnic injustices and promote reconciliation.

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Reconciliation also involves confronting broader social and economic divisions. In both countries, other facets of discrimination have come into sharper focus. In South Africa, where formal reconciliation processes have been more extensive, economic inequalities rooted in apartheid remain stubbornly entrenched. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, where formal reconciliation measures have been more limited, the 2022 economic crisis has deepened existing disparities. Across both contexts, the question arises: will economic divides overtake older racial or ethnic tensions as the dominant fault line, or will they instead exacerbate and entrench those divisions further?

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In the South African context, the movement towards reconciliation was built to address racial injustices, but they are entrenched in economic marginalisation. In Sri Lanka, in large parts due to political instability and economic mismanagement, policies have often also failed to comprehensively address ethno-religious discrimination.

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In South Africa, the socio-economic divide remains deeply racialised. Most white South Africans (86%) report never having gone hungry, compared with only 50% of Black South Africans. On average, Black households also support more dependents than white households (4.1 compared to  2.6), intensifying monthly financial strain and food insecurity (Lefko-Everett, 2024). Unsurprisingly, 39% of Black South Africans now identify economic inequality as the most serious societal division, nearly double the rate reported by other racial groups.

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Sri Lanka, too, is seeing a shift. Over 39% of Sri Lankans say economic status is the main basis of discrimination, overtaking ethnicity, language, and religion (Sri Lanka Barometer, 2024). In some regions, like the Uva Province, the poorest in the country and home to a majority Sinhalese population, that figure rises to over 50%. This suggests that in more ethnically homogenous areas, high levels of poverty may be tied less to interethnic discrimination and more to broader patterns of economic marginalisation. Still, the stark sense of material deprivation in these regions cuts across geographic and identity lines, reinforcing the economic divides which shape perceptions of inequality.

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A key metric that captures this lived experience is the Lived Poverty Index (LPI). The LPI is a composite score reflecting how often people go without basic needs like food, clean water, or medical care. In South Africa, the 2023 LPI score among Black citizens is 2.3, compared to 1.6 for white South Africans, on a scale where higher scores mean more frequent deprivation (Lefko-Everett, 2024). The contrast reveals how apartheid’s economic legacy continues to shape daily life.

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In Sri Lanka, the LPI climbed sharply from a national mean of 1.4 in 2020 to 3.8 in 2023 (Sri Lanka Barometer, 2024). The 2022 economic crisis, which produced long fuel and food queues and prolonged power cuts, is widely documented as the proximate shock that pushed many households into deeper hardship (Reuters, 2022a; Reuters, 2022b). World Bank analysis also finds that the surging inflation which eroded purchasing power translated into a sizable rise in poverty between 2021 and 2022, as real incomes fell and jobs were lost (World Bank, 2023). SLB evidence on the biggest impacts of the crisis further underscores that many Sri Lankans identify rising prices and shortages as the most serious, lasting consequences, which helps explain the steep LPI jump and why economic status is more frequently named as a primary basis for discrimination (Sri Lanka Barometer, 2024).

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A comparison of both countries’ LPI clearly shows a similar message: that poverty is not only widespread, but unevenly distributed, and people feel it.

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According to Pellicer and Ranchhod (2020), “discrimination in educational opportunities, healthcare, and neighbourhood quality were designed to create productivity differentials across race groups” in apartheid South Africa, effectively entrenching marginalised communities in cycles of economic struggle. Similarly, Wijedasa (2022) argues in her thesis that the Sri Lankan Civil War was “a complex struggle based on class and caste distinctions along with ethnic tensions”, rather than purely ethnic in nature. These historical nuances help explain why economic marginalisation remains so persistent.

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Ethnic and racial reconciliation often begins with symbolic steps: truth-telling, memorials, institutional reform. But economic injustice is stickier to solve. It demands structural change – redistribution, infrastructure, access to opportunity – all without falling into ingrained racial and ethnic discrimination.

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And economic status doesn’t necessarily stay fixed in the way many believe race and ethnicity do. It shifts, stratifies, and creeps into every corner of daily life. When economic marginalisation overlaps with race and ethnicity, as it often does, it deepens old wounds under a new guise. Without a serious reckoning with class, reconciliation risks becoming a symbolic shell.

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To avoid this, reconciliation policies must evolve to more precisely target the intersection of economic and racial or ethnic disparities. In South Africa, this may look like revisiting the design of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) policies and investing in transport, housing, and social infrastructure, especially outside of urban centers. Persistent racial disparities cannot be effectively addressed without comprehensive economic policies, as efforts that overlook this inequality risk perpetuating divisions rooted in the country’s apartheid legacy.

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In Sri Lanka, more localised poverty interventions and services that account for ethno-religous and linguistic diversity are crucial. While existing programs like Samurdhi remain the country’s flagship poverty alleviation scheme, it faces chronic problems with political interference and inequitable distribution. Particularly in the wake of the 2022 crisis, many households were left without meaningful relief, as the assistance levels lagged behind lived experiences of poverty. Additionally, without meaningful justice and accountability processes for wartime violations, economic interventions risk being seen as palliative gestures that sidestep, or even entrench, the ethnic and political grievances that continue to shape Sri Lanka’s social fabric.

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South Africa and Sri Lanka are not only shaped by hunger, poverty, and inequality, but also by the unresolved political and social forces that underpin them. Reconciliation cannot remain stagnant, anchored solely in historical grievances or narrow definitions of the past. To stay relevant and effective, it must confront today’s complex, material realities, recognising that in Sri Lanka, unresolved ethnic and political grievances complicate economic interventions, while in South Africa, enduring racial disparities cannot be addressed without comprehensive economic reforms. Ultimately, this means placing class, social reform, and economic justice more firmly at the center of the reconciliation conversation.

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Because at the end of the day, redistributive justice isn’t just economic policy, it’s reconciliation policy.

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References

Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka. (2022). NCPI — December 2022: National Consumer Price Index (report). https://www.statistics.gov.lk/Resource/en/InflationAndPrices/NCPI/NCPI_December_2022.pdf (reports year-on-year NCPI / headline inflation ~59.2% in Dec 2022). Department of Census and Statistics

Lefko-Everett, K. (2024). Reimagining Apartheid Reparations 2024. Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. https://www.ijr.org.za/home/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Reimagining-Apartheid-Reparations-2024.pdf

Pellicer, M. and Ranchhod, V., 2020. Estimating the effect of racial classification on labour market outcomes: A case study from Apartheid South Africa.

Reuters. (2022a). Sri Lanka suffers long power cuts as currency shortage makes fuel imports hard to buy. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-suffers-long-power-cuts-lacks-foreign-currency-import-fuel-2022-03-30/ Reuters

Reuters. (2022b). Thousands queue for petrol, gas in Sri Lanka amid warnings of food shortages. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/we-are-going-die-food-shortages-add-sri-lankas-woes-2022-05-20/ Reuters

Sri Lanka Barometer (2024). 2023 Public Opinion Survey on Reconciliation. GIZ-SCOPE. Available at: https://www.srilankabarometer.lk/publications

Wijedasa, I., 2022. Changing Narratives of the Sri Lankan Civil War: How Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism and Tamil Nationalism are Rooted in Class and Caste Conflict (Doctoral dissertation, Boston College).

World Bank. (2023). Sri Lanka: Poverty & Equity Brief — April 2023. World Bank Group. https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_download/poverty/987B9C90-CB9F-4D93-AE8C-750588BF00QA/current/Global_POVEQ_LKA.pdf (discusses increases in poverty during 2021–2022). World Bank Databank

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Vasuda Vaidyanathan is a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy Analysis with a focus on climate adaptation. She is currently an intern at the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa, where she contributes to research and database management on the South African Reconciliation Barometer. She has also worked with organizations in India on rural climate resilience, agricultural adaptation, and policy engagement. Her academic and professional interests lie in how structural reforms can bridge economic, social, and environmental divides to advance justice and reconciliation.

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