Social Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Social Re-engineering for Inclusive Development

Description

This book critically examines the current social policy in post-apartheid South Africa and proposes an alternative social policy agenda to create a new development pathway for the country. Taking social policy as a vehicle that will facilitate the creation of a new society altogether, namely the "Good Society," the author argues for the adoption of policy that will socially re-engineer South Africa. The author shows how the policy tools and development interventions which were undertaken by the post-apartheid state in driving South Africa’s transformation agenda failed to emancipate many individuals, families, and communities from the cycle of intergenerational poverty and underdevelopment. He contends that social policy interventions that foster the social re-engineering of South African society must take place to untangle the inherited colonial-apartheid social order. This book includes comparative analyses on the Global South and Global North to present the ways in which countries such as post-Second World War Great Britain and Sweden, and post-independence Zambia of the 1960s and 1970s, were able to use social policy to create new societies altogether or places similar to the "Good Society." The conceptual and methodological issues that form the basis for this book reside in public policy-making and the public good and will be of interest to scholars of social policy, social development, and South African society. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of acronyms List of tables Foreword Preface PART I Conceptual and theoretical perspectives Introduction 1 Theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical underpinnings of social policy 2 Locating social policy in the political economy and institutional dimensions 3 Unpacking social engineering and social re-engineering 4 Social policy and the notion of the Good Society PART II Historical and comparative perspectives of social policy 5 Social policy in colonial and apartheid South Africa 6 Social policy in the post-apartheid era 7 Social policy in the Global North and Global South: How social policy created new societies in different parts of the world PART III The practical dimensions of social policy and social re-engineering 8 Evidence-based government for social re-engineering 9 The state and social policy 10 Social re-engineering via universal education, universal health-care, inclusive human settlements, land redistribution, and employment generation 11 Social re-engineering through the promotion of family life and the strengthening of families, gender realignment, Early Childhood Development (ECD), and youth development 12 Social policy and social re-engineering for a highly violent society Conclusion Bibliography Index