Globalisation : democratisation, neo-liberalism, and development-aid in South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study has set to describe and explain the causal relationship between the process ofglobalisation, and that of democratisation and development in South Africa. Understandingthis process required an analysis of the political and economic patterns followed, and policychoices made by state elites in South Africa, and to compare these processes with othercountries that are also integrating into the global political economy.In South Africa, the dominance of the external factor on the country's socio-economic anddevelopment policy making process is exposed in this study. Analysis of the progress ofSouth Africa's macro-economic policy (GEAR) in creating sustainable economic growth, andin linking it with the locally defined notion of 'people-based development' (as per RDPdocument, 1994) over a five-year period reveals firstly, that while GEAR is portrayed as bothan economic and a 'people-based development' policy, it is an externally oriented policywhose ends are largely the promotion of transnational capitalist interest. The contradiction isthat while a redress of development discrepancies (i.e. by providing social-welfare, health,education, clean water, electricity, transport and housing) calls for an increase in governmentexpenditure, GEAR's fiscal stance prohibits such spending.South Africa's development policy represents a much broader and a common problem in theglobal socio-economic superstructure, solutions for which cannot be derived by analysing thepolicy of only one country, but the whole transnational political-economic system.The problems of the current global political-economic order and its development programsremains naked for all to see. Even common sense indicates that the North-South powerrelations are one-sided, problematic and should not be allowed to continue indefinitely asthey stand. In addition, that the underdeveloped countries should continue to play an activerole in global structures such as the UN, the UNOs such as UNCTAD, the WTO, and otherinternational institutions if they are to impact on policies that govern the North-Southrelations.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University