The potential for a wealth tax in South Africa: meritocracy as a ‘brake’ on political trust

The relationship between political trust and support for redistributive policies reveals a paradox: while political trust typically increases policy support, it may simultaneously strengthen meritocratic beliefs that legitimise wealth accumulation and suppress redistributive preferences. Drawing on survey data from 2,249 wealthier, predominantly secondary- and tertiary-educated South African adults collected in 2022, I test a mediation framework where political trust affects wealth tax preferences both directly and indirectly through meritocratic tendencies. The analysis reveals a ‘meritocratic brake effect’: while higher political trust increases support for wealth taxation, it also strengthens meritocratic beliefs about wealth accumulation, which in turn suppresses redistributive preferences. This creates a complex dynamic where the positive effect of trust on wealth tax support is partially offset by merit-based legitimisation of inequality. Given South Africa’s extreme inequality and historically low political trust levels (70 per cent of respondents expressing distrust), these findings reveal a potential vicious cycle where the institutional confidence needed to implement redistributive policies is undermined by the very ideologies that legitimise wealth concentration. The study contributes to understanding how trust-inequality-meritocracy dynamics shape attitudinal receptivity to wealth taxation in highly unequal societies, suggesting that successful wealth tax implementation may require simultaneous efforts to rebuild institutional trust and challenge meritocratic narratives about wealth accumulation.