Evaluating South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Democratic Prospects through the Lens of Economic Development Theory (original) (raw)
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2018
The political landscape of South African democracy has been significant to bear in determining its development and achievements. With the introduction of Constitution of 1996, it was clear that South African history of apartheid was burned to ashes, and the new constitutional order emerged to serve under new democratic South Africa from 1994 to the future. This study addresses the reflection on the successes and failures of South African democracy with the view from the last 23 years of democratic dispensation. It addresses events and activities that occurred in this process of democracy and determines their relevance and importance in South African democracy. With a view from incidences such as high rate of poverty, unemployment and growing inequalities in the country, the study also provides some reasons contributing to these problems. Therefore, the study has identified some democratic theoretical approaches relevant to understand the effective process of democracy and how does it reflect in the context of South African democracy commenced in 1994. On the other hand, the aim of this study measured the relevance and significance of democracy in South Africa at present and to the future. In other words, this study also answered questions as to whether citizens in general still consider democracy important and beneficial, and what could be some failures and successes towards achieving it effectively. However, the research findings also revealed some of the detrimental and impeding issues to effective democratic governance in South Africa. It has revealed that the issues of corruption, maladministration of state institutions and patronage have impacted negatively on the smooth process of democracy in the last 23 years. For this reason, this saw issues of poverty, unemployment and inequalities increasing higher and higher especially for the past 9 years of President Jacob Zuma administration. Moreover, this study has provided with some recommendations to the problems existing in this young democracy of just 23 years. That is why this requires good leaders, active citizens and civil society partners to play a critical role to ensure that the Constitution remains undoubtedly the supreme law of the country for smooth democratic governance in South Africa.
WP 12/151 - Poverty, Inequality and the Nature of Economic Growth in South Africa
The post-1994 period in the South African economy is characterised, perhaps most powerfully, by the fact that the economy recorded one of its longest periods of positive economic growth in the country’s history. One of the more vexing issues within the economic policy terrain in post-apartheid South Africa though, has been the impact of this consistently positive growth performance on social welfare. Many observers have highlighted the potentially harmful consequences of persistently high levels of poverty and particularly, economic inequality on the quality and sustainability of democracy. The evidence suggests, at best, six key trends which are noteworthy in terms of observing changes and challenges in South Africa’s second decade of democracy. Firstly, it is clear that both absolute and relative levels of poverty have fallen for African- and female-headed households. And it is a result invariant to the choice of poverty line. Secondly though, we continue to show that race and gender remain overwhelming determinants of this poverty profile. Thirdly, the trends in income inequality suggest that one of the world’s most unequal societies has quite possibly become the most unequal. In turn, and our fourth key deduction, it is evident that income inequality between racial groups – to all intents and purposes between Africans and Whites – is driving this overall increase. Our analysis of the nature of economic growth since 1995 suggests that despite positive economic growth, individuals at the top-end of the distribution have gained the most from the post-apartheid growth dividend. Indeed, what this suggests is that the country’s current democratic growth model is crafted around supporting incomes at the bottom-end of the distribution through an extensive social transfer programme, whilst offering few returns to those in the middle of the distribution. It is not evident, as South Africa enters its first post-1994 recession with declining tax revenues and rising fiscal deficits, whether such a growth model is indeed desirable or sustainable. JEL Code: I3 Keywords: Poverty, Inequality, Social Transfers Acknowledgements: The research, from which this paper emanates, was originally commissioned the Presidency.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Has South Africa's political settlement provided a constructive platform for successfully addressing the country's deep-seated economic challenges in an inclusive way? Or is it increasingly consolidating as a settlement which is narrowly of and for elites (albeit in importantly different ways from its apartheid predecessor)? This paper addresses these questions, and reexamines the foundations of the democracy in an attempt to understand the obstacles to South Africa moving into a truly sustainable democracy. It provides a broad overview of South Africa's evolving political settlement and the capability and commitment of the South African state (and the elites which underpin it) to deliver inclusive development. The political settlement analysis is anchored in a comparative assessment of evolving patterns of income distribution across countries and over time. The paper offers reflections on how the challenges going forward for South Africa might be addressed.
Democracy Without the People: Economics, Governance and Representation in South Africa
Perhaps more than any other democratizing country, South Africa generates widely differing assessments of the present state and likely future prospects of its democracy. If one takes the long view—comparing South Africa today to where it was just 12 years ago—it is difficult not to be enthusiastic about its accomplishments and its future. South Africa successfully emerged from the shadow of apparently irreconcilable conflict and unavoidable racial civil war to create a common nation. It has negotiated two democratic constitutions and has held four successful nationwide elections for national and local government. On the economic front, it has avoided the triple-digit inflation that many feared would accompany a populist economic strategy of redistribution and government intervention. It has stabilized the expanding debt and reversed the double-digit inflation inherited from the apartheid-era government. There have been impressive gains in employment opportunities and income for the growing black middle class, and poor blacks have seen unprecedented improvements in access to basic necessities. Yet if one looks at South Africa’s new democracy in a comparative perspective, one’s enthusiasm is greatly tempered, if not altogether removed. Cross-national analysis has highlighted three broad sets of factors crucial to democratic consolidation: a growing economy that steadily reduces inequality; stable and predictable political institutions; and a supportive political culture. In terms of these factors, an analysis of South Africa yields, at best, some reasons for guarded optimism and, at worst, many grounds for serious concern.
2009
South Africa has a long and infamous history of high inequality with an overbearing racial footprint to this inequality. Many have seen the emergence and persistence of this inequality to be the major unifying theme of the country's twentieth century economic history. Certainly, this is the key context to understanding why the issue of inequality has continued to dominate the post-apartheid landscape. There are two indicators of the post-apartheid political economy that have attracted special attention in this regard. The first is whether ...
The Economic and Political Ramifications of Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies
South Africa is regarded as one of the most unequal societies in the world. Apartheid engineered a population with vast inequalities across racial groups. The nature of this inequality was primarily racially based. The political and economic trajectory of the last twenty years has somewhat changed the nature and composition of this kind of inequality but fundamental continuity of deep inequality is still somehow maintained. The post-apartheid distributional regime continues to divide South Africans into insiders and outsiders. Although the political pattern is still largely racially based, a new political landscape is beginning to emerge which is based on the complexity of class and race entanglements. The rising inequality within the black community is becoming a cause for concern for the continuation of the present developmental trajectory. It has created a fertile ground for the rise of populist movements and demagogues that will seek to take advantage of those neglected by the s...
Economic Policy and Power Relations in South Africa's Transition to Democracy
World Development, 2000
Ð South Africa's leading anti-apartheid organization, the African National Congress (ANC) entered the period of transition in the early 1990s with only an impressionist economic vision. But for all its limitations it was a (state-led) program of development directed at alleviating the legacy of poverty and inequality. The ANC was forced to begin to fashion a set of modeled economic proposals around which it could at some level``negotiate'' with other organizations and social groups and contest an election. As in the case of the negotiations around a post-apartheid constitution, the economic program ultimately adopted diered signi®cantly from the organization's original vision. The new economic program was a fairly orthodox neoliberal one. The shift in economic policy, we would contend, was the result of the ANC's perception of the balance of economic and political power at both the global and local level. This article critically examines these political and economic interactions in the South Africa of the 1990s; attempts to explain the reasons underlying the shift in economic policy; and ends with some re¯ections on the ways in which the South African experience in economic policy reform either elaborates or revises existing theories of transitional societies. Ó