“FROM RDP TO GEAR TO POST-POLOKWANE”. THE ANC AND THE PROVISION OF SOCIAL SECURITY FOR POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa has never been a welfare state in the sense that it has not provided all its peoplewith a set of social policies to guarantee the minimum standard of living. The apartheid statewas a welfare state for whites but not for blacks. However, the problems the country faces,namely chronic mass unemployment and increasing poverty in the context of globalisation andpost-industrialisation, have certain similarity in structure with what the Northern welfare statesare experiencing, although in the South African case the problems were, historically speaking,much more serious and more complicated because of its racial aspects (Makino, 2004:6)