This report forms one chapter of the SACO 2022 CCI Mapping Study. Aims were to analyse the number and proportion of people in South Africa who are employed in the cultural economy, as well as changes in the size, transformation, age, gender, education lev
This report forms one chapter of the SACO 2022 CCI Mapping Study. Aims were to analyse the number and proportion of people in South Africa who are employed in the cultural economy, as well as changes in the size, transformation, age, gender, education levels and working conditions of those in cultural occupations since the last mapping study, using official national data sets from Statistics South Africa. A special focus of this report is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural and creative industry workers in 2020. Methods used to identify cultural occupations and industries are those set out in the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics (UNESCO, 2009) and the recent UNESCO Indicators for Culture 2030, adapted for South Africa (Hadisi and Snowball, 2016).
Using the “cultural trident” method, findings showed that cultural occupations increased from 380 000 in 2017 to 385 500 in 2019. The whole creative economy (including non-cultural support occupations) accounted for 1 million jobs in 2019, which represented 6% of the workforce in South Africa.
Creative occupations in South Africa are showing continued transformation: including Black African, Coloured and those of Indian/Asian origin, 86.7% of people working in cultural occupations in South Africa are black (compared to 83.6% in 2017). The profile of those in younger age groups is also more representative than older people in cultural occupations.
The largest domain, in terms of cultural occupations in 2019, continues to be Visual Arts and Crafts (44.5%), followed by Intangible Cultural Heritage (22.5%), Design and Creative Services (13.4%) and Books and Press (12.4%). The provinces with the largest proportions of cultural occupations are Gauteng (32%), KwaZulu-Natal (18.2%) and the Western Cape (14.4%), as also found in previous mapping studies.
However, as found in other studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on creative economy workers in South Africa (SACO, 2021) and internationally, young and emerging (early career) cultural workers are more vulnerable to disruptions and job losses than older, established creatives. To ensure the continued transformation and sustainability of the sector, it is important to provide support especially to young creatives.
More workers in cultural occupations are men (57.3%) than women (42.7%), which is very similar to the gender distribution in non-cultural occupations. As noted in previous reports and mapping studies, the significant under-representation of young women in cultural occupations compared to young men is a concerning trend.
A much greater proportion of people in cultural occupations work in the informal economy (46.3% in 2019) than those in non-cultural occupations (29.8%). Cultural occupations are also more likely to be freelance “own account” workers (34.5% of cultural occupations compared to 9.5% of non-cultural workers). Both these characteristics make those in cultural occupations more vulnerable to shocks, such as the COVID-19 lockdown.
QLFS data showed that cultural occupations suffered larger relative decreases in the number of jobs in 2020 than non-cultural occupations: by Quarter 4 of 2020 there were 295 000 people working in cultural occupations, compared to 380 000 in Quarter 4 of 2019 (a 22% decline in cultural occupations, or 85 000 jobs lost between Q4 of 2019 and Q4 of 2020). However, although there are fewer women overall working in cultural occupations and industries, women in cultural occupations were not as negatively affected by the crisis as men: while cultural jobs for both men and women declined in 2020, compared to 2019, the decline was steeper for men (a year-on-year drop of 25%) than for women (a year-on-year drop of 18.9%).
