Prospects of an equal society post apartheid society.
At the fall of Apartheid and the rise of Democracy hope was
over flowing with regards to the prospects of employment, development and justice.
This is the time when we all thought that all previous imbalances would be
reconciled and justice would prevail.
The fall of apart was morally correct and 100% ethical. Looking
specifically at the policies that were put in place in order to achieve the
goals. Policies such as the RDP Reconstruction
and Development Programme sought
out to “to bring social transformation to South Africa” this was intended to
touch on most if not all the social ills of the past and shift the South Africa
majority a gear up. Although the blue
print was done in consideration with other factors that could fuel up the
process and those that might hamper the process little was paid to the issue
population growth. The population growth becomes a relevant factor as many scholars
argue that there’s a cycle that exists along poverty lines.
Now my Question is, how
does this very cycle threatens the prospect of us achieving the social
transformation that we seek to achieve? Because if there’s a cycle that
exists for poverty then the poverty short term goals that we aim to achieve
will be carried through to the other generations. The degree of naive beliefs
is also a factor, because even when we seek to develop the poor and try to
shorten the gap between the Haves and Have not, it all sounds practical but in
the real sense is that they have are not stagnant therefore development also
takes place in their part of the court. There is statement does not suggest
that developmental projects are futile exercises but that when looking at
development we should not look at it as way of breaching gaps but away of
improving the conditions of living and this would differ in the degrees of the
status quo of who is being developed.
The comparative approach therefore limits us to judging
success with the status of the haves at that moment. Now in terms of measuring success this will
always seem as if they have not’s are still far behind the developmental line
because development does not only occur where it’s needed but it also occurs in
the part of the developed, its more or less parallel but another thing that you
might notice is that at times it happens at an accelerated speed in the
developed corner.
Let me use a scenario of a small town in South Africa where
a businessman (T-boss) has a shop and two cars the shop is located in an area
where the locals are poor. And in the other corner we have T-man someone who is
a local and is a customer at the store of the businessman. Now the local
community receives help from the government with the roll out of 500
“affordable” RDP houses this lift the standards of living for T-man and he
therefore decides that I am going to buy a double bed since am staying in a
proper house. Now because Tman has moved a notch and can now concentrate on
other things than building a house for his family. He then buys the double-bed
from Tboss’s store after saving for a long. 
My point in that scenario is that because Tman’s living
conditions have been uplifted so is T-boss and in some cases you will find that
T-boss’s business will be receiving other orders from other locals , this
making his business boom. And he may also think of investing
the profits to get more money. Now what happened on the left also happened on the
and thus Tman will never be at the same level as T-boss . Unless Tman wins lotto and his doesn’t get
confused with the money and think it will never end or Tboss is a Malema case.
We should never measure success by looking at other but by
the standards not everything in life is a race that we must run because there’s
a victory to be won for the first three competitors. Sometimes we need to run
against time (standards). Your success cannot be measured by someone else’s we need to work on improving on what we had yesterday.
Therefore the aim should always be to improve the living
conditions of ordinary(all) South African we can never have a state where pap
and meat is what everyone eats , some will always be far ahead.
