"From RDP to gear to post-polokwane". the ANC and the provi-sion of social security for post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Prior to South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 the ANC adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) -a programme that contained elements of social security. However, the RDP soon ran into trouble. From the beginning the government lacked the capacity to implement it. Therefore the government embraced a neo-liberal conservative macro-economic strategy -Growth, Employment and Redistribution, or GEAR. Tensions between the Mbeki faction and COSATU supporters within the ANC, inter alia over GEAR policies, culminated at the party's national convention in Polokwane in December 2007 when President Mbeki was ousted as ANC president. Under the new presidency of Jacob Zuma South Africa is probably bound to see a revised, strongly labour-biased and developing state welfare and social security policy.