Social justice, care and developmental welfare in South Africa: a capabilities perspective

Abstract

One of the paradoxes of the democratic project in South Africa is that the combination of political empowerment, organised constituencies of poor people and increasing social sector spending has made minimal impact on increasing equality. Despite an overall macroeconomic framework that emphasises fiscal restraint, social welfare spending has increased in the past 14 years, and dramatically so since 2003. Almost one in four South Africans receives some or other form of grant, and the majority of recipients are women. Indeed, South Africa is regularly described as the developing world’s largest and most generous welfare state. I address the extent to which gender inequalities are reduced through public sector spending, asking the question: what is the optimal relationship between social policy and the intrinsic democratic goals of equality, social justice and citizenship? Drawing on Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, the article argues that a focus on social sector spending alone is inadequate to address questions of social justice. Instead, I draw attention to the normative assumptions, discursive environment and institutional context in which social policy is elaborated and implemented. I argue that, in a context in which there is relatively poor infrastructural capacity in the state to ensure that service delivery takes place in fair, consistent and egalitarian ways, households and communities act as shock absorbers of state failures and women’s gendered burdens increase, despite formal commitments to gender equality. While women appear to have gained from political empowerment, women politicians did not effectively leverage their position in the state to promote pro‐poor policies or to build coalitions to challenge the watering down of early commitments to reducing gender inequalities.

Keywords:

• social justice
• care
• gender
• developmental welfare
• capabilities

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Carnegie Social Justice Grant, Wits University, for supporting this research and Beth Goldblatt for helping me to sharpen my arguments. I am grateful to Stephen Gelb, EDGE Institute, for allowing me to use this graph (ref. Appendix 1 of this paper).

Notes

1. Female labour force participation, as a percentage of the total labour force, declined from 42% in 1990 to 38% in 2004. During this period, the total labour force grew from 14 million to 19 million. Women’s unemployment grew from 27.8% to 31.7% in this period (World Bank 2007). For African women and men, the official unemployment rates in September 2006 were 36.04% and 25.3%, respectively (Parenzee and Budlender 2007, p. 3).

2. This decline is driven by the increase in HIV/AIDS infection, and men’s life expectancy also declined during this period, from 59 to 44 (World Bank 2007).

3. For a discussion of the state’s and citizens’ views on the poor, see Seekings (2007), also Meth (2004).

4. For an incisive account of these dilemmas, see Lund (2007).

5. See Walker (2003) for an illuminating case study of gender terminology in land policies.