Grassroots struggles
in post-apartheid South Africa:
What should Social Work do?
Linda Smith
University of the Witwatersand
SWAN
2011
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South Africa, the nation that has given Nelson
Mandela to the world, is seen as the beacon and
icon of successful transformation from racist
Apartheid to a free non-racist society with one of the
most progressive constitutions globally.
Or not?...
We need to ask: “how does social work respond”?
As we speak, a new crisis has unfolded – the death of
Andries Tatana, an educator of young people and
committed citizen - during service delivery protests
in Ficksburg in the Free State, on Wednesday. He
was beaten to death by six policemen. The crime is
not only in the terrible police brutality, but also in the
open declaration of class war against the masses.
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Visuals of current South African realities
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INTRODUCTION
South African social work, as social work the world over, needs to
ask:
“Are we as social workers contributing to or hindering the struggle
for social justice and a better world?” Our leitmotief is that of
Pursuing social justice and being a human rights profession, but
we continually perform social control functions which maintain the
status quo.
Many reasons cause us to fail in our purpose – fear of disfavour
from our employers or the state, the discomfort of challenging our
own distorted ideologies, or even the discomfort of continual
awareness about injustice and oppression
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SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEXT OF STRUGGLE
During apartheid, the struggle for social justice and equality became
subsumed by the project of political emancipation
The end of Apartheid brought freedom and equality in the ideal rather
than the material. Statutes and policies are transformed, but
society remains largely untransformed.
SA society still stratified by race and class: 40 – 50% people
regarded as poor (May and Meth, 2007). Levels of inequality are
greater than ever before, with one of the highest Gini Co-efficients
in the world
SA among the 50 wealthiest countries, but appears 115th out of 175
in social indicators and has shown a decline in the Human
Development Index
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SA ‘s shift from RDP (Redistribution and Development
programme based on the Freedom Charter) to GEAR in
1996 was the ANC Government’s response to pressures
of World financial institutions (IMF, World Bank);
‘Tutelage’ of African states (Bond, 2005)
Global neoliberal capitalism dictates the path of social
change and macro economic policies such as GEAR
(Growth Employment and Redistribution policy) sees the
market as the template for solving problems
Neo-liberalism exists in complex entanglement with the
post-colonial (i.e. the ongoing effects of colonial
exploitation, extraction and oppression) and may even
be seen as a continuation of historical colonialism
evidenced by global resource consumption and wealth
distribution (Pollack and Chadha, 2004)
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COMMUNITY STRUGGLE
Communities increasingly desperate about poor municipal service
delivery and unfulfilled promises
South Africa’s Andile Nxitama, a new young black consciousness leader
and the organiser of the radical “September National Initiative”,
argues that it is the ANC which is to blame for this death –
reminiscent of the death by the apartheid regime of Hector Petersen
in the 1976 Soweto uprisings
He states: “ Township life is hellish – it is characterised by mass poverty,
government neglect, violence, hopelessness, overcrowding and
hunger.”
A recent initiative is a mass consciousness raising campaign led by a
pastor in Khayelitsha, Cape Town called “Welcome to Hell”
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SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS VICTORY APRIL 2011
Scholarships to Universities for social work students cut
Payments for meals excluded!! Some SW students decided
enough was enough…
And so a programme of social activisim and organisation of all
students was initiated among three Universities in the area.
This was support ed by Student Representative Council s and
staff of he Department (resources, participation)
Petitions, requests for meetings with Minister of Social
Development, resistence, written demands and threatened
hunger strike
Victory after two months yesterday. Scholarship restrored
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Social change and transformation requires revolution
and revolutions are the doing of ‘the masses’. Trotsky,
in his preface to “The history of the Russian revolution”
(1930) refers to the insertion and interference of the
masses as being the critical ‘moment of revolution’:
“The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct
interference of the masses in historical events....at those
crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer
endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers
excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their
traditional representatives, and create by their own
interference the initial groundwork for a new régime… The
history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the
forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership
over their own destiny.”
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Social movements, old and new, have played a critical role in the SA
context – then, during the anti-apartheid liberation struggle and now,
in the anti-capitalist, anti-poverty movements
Currently, organizations such as
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Abahlali Basemjondolo (shack dwellers movement)
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Anti-Privatisation Forum
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Anti-eviction campaign
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Welcome to Hell campaign (Western Cape)
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Service delivery protests throughout the country
are expressions of ‘intolerable grievances’, resisting oppression,
neo-liberalism and inequality. It is at the point where such
grievances become defined as “unendurable”, that people begin
organizing
And so we must turn to such social movements in Freirian (1970)
praxis, to reflect, act and institutionalize our knowledge development
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Scenes in South Africa today are reminiscent of the 1980’s…
however, the apartheid struggle around racial oppression is replaced
by class oppression…
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South African shack dwellers’ movement
http://www.abahlali.org
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SOUTH AFRICA AND THE PROJECT OF COLONIALISM
SA colonised by the Dutch in 1652. This colonial and imperialist
project was one of merchant capitalism. Aime Cesaire, an
important anti-colonial writer states:
“It is not evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a
desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and
tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God,
nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once and for
all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive
actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale
grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant,
appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected
shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its
history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a
world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.”
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(Cesaire, 1955, p. 33)
It was this need for cheap labour, land and resources that drove the
Dutch and British and then the Afrikaner nationalist government
(after 1924), to the racist capitalist system expressed in Afrikaner
nationalist Apartheid
Apartheid worked very ‘successfully’ to achieve the capitalist project
of entrenching white supremist wealth and domination, and
extractive western corporate profit-making.
But it was precisely the antagonism within these dominant forces –
and the fact that the old order was “no longer endurable to the
masses”, that led to the end of Afrikaner nationalism.
South Africa’s particular form of racist capitalism succeeded in
producing vast levels of race stratified inequality (Moeletsi Mbeki,
2009, p. 48)
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The resistance movement and its struggle for liberation, gradually
produced change guided by the 1950’s Freedom Charter – a
socialist manifesto. This was the vision of the ANC until it took
power in 1994.
As labour union movement became more organized during the 1970s
with the formation of COSATU (Congress of SA trade unions),
there was an increase in force towards black labour by the state.
This in turn led to increased pressure by major corporations on the
SA government to withdraw apartheid policies. Why? Not for
moral Anti-apartheid ideals – but because production and profits
were threatened
The dominance of race and ethnicity in SA politics contributed to a
false sense that it was these ideologies rather than socioeconomic structures that determined political agendas
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Liberal discourses see transformation as a project of human rights, rule of
law, anti-racism and equal opportunity. All this should occur within the
free-market, economic growth and maximization of profit with its trickle
down of resources to the poor.
And so the new SA adopts discourse around self help, socio-economic
development, and self-reliance as its new mantra – of the state and… of
social work and its new form – ‘developmental social work’.
‘Creating dependence’ on the state, through the provision of social security
(at about 20 pounds per month for child support grants and about 100
pounds per month for old age and disability pensions) is considered
dangerous
The liberal-democratic project of freedom from racist discrimination,
universal franchise, legislated equality, and non-racism, improved access
to resources and opportunities and affirmative action to redress past
discrimination, is being achieved.
The project of a socially just, transformed society in which the dignity and
quality of life of all is guaranteed, in both the material and the ideal, is far
from achieved.
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THE LEITMOTIF OF SOCIAL WORK
The project of humanisation, social justice, equality and freedom
from oppression, is claimed by social work to be its leitmotif.
However, the sad truth is that social work often finds itself in a
position of complicity with ongoing oppression, maintenance of
the status quo, shoring up of skewed power relations or
acquiescence (McKendrick, 1998; Dominelli, 2002; Patel, 2005;
Sewpaul, 2004).
Attempts to restore or nurture hope for the achievement of change
are futile without critical consciousness and critical analysis of
psychopolitical realities.
Working towards social change in the Marxist real rather than the
Hegelian ideal (Brown, 2001), may be found in a radical social
work engaged with such critical analysis and conscientisation
(Ferguson, 2008).
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DISCOURSE OF POLITICS OF SOCIAL WORK THEORY
(Payne, 2005, p. 8)
Reflexive-therapeutic
(Therapeutic helping)
Individualist-Reformist
(Maintenance of social order)
Socialist-Collectivist
(Emancipatory/transformational)
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CRITICAL DISCOURSE IN SOCIAL WORK IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEXT
We must revisit the explanatory power of our theories and reclaim our leitmotif of
building a socially just, equal society free from oppression.
SW must understand and support the dynamics of the revolutionary moment when
the masses insert themselves into history and work for critical conscientisation
to hasten the process whereby conditions become unendurable and intolerable
Structural analysis must include an understanding of the entrenchment of racist
capitalism during the apartheid era as well as the ‘entanglement’ of the postcolonial context
We must reflect on the processes and dynamics of the New Social Movements for
appropriate and new knowledge for social justice and change
We must account for both the psychological and structural (psycho-social ) nature of
racism, inequality and other forms of oppression – and thus for our ‘psychopolitical validity’
The taken for granted pedagogy of global neo-liberalism must be resisted
A critical analysis and stance must be adopted in relation to dynamics of power and
oppression and the way that these relations are perpetuated through hegemonic
discourse – ongoing reflexivity and critical conscientisiation
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