Basic Needs in the Northern Province and South Africa’s Globalization Agenda
Author(s)
Tsheola, Johannes
Abstract
The requirement for the improvement of poor people’s basic needs and overall quality of life is inseparable from concerns with sustainability and state capacity for executing social welfare responsibilities. South Africa has, paradoxically, redefined state role away from social provision, as it replaced the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) with the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy in 1996. Whereas the RDP accorded the state a pivotal role in meeting basic needs, GEAR pursued outward-looking development. In accordance with the logic of GEAR, the Northern Province Government formulated its Growth and Development Strategy (GDS), essentially an offspring of that macro-policy. Using the Northern Province as case study, this paper illustrates that GEAR and GDS have engendered outward-looking development that is also open to the dictates of external forces. It is argued that South Africa and that province are as such inserted into the global system in a way that they cannot shape or domesticate globalization for resolution of their germane development difficulties. We point out that that form of globalization has not led to the improvement of the poor people’s access to basic needs. In conclusion, we urge for the establishment of a strong developmental state that would engender auto-centeredness.
