“Seeing Everyone Do More Than Society Would Expect Them”: Social Development, Austerity and Unstable Resources in South African Community Services

Abstract

In 1994, South Africa had to reinvent itself after decades of legalized, race-based, multifaceted, state-led oppression. Though it rebuilt itself in the context of deepening neoliberalism, South Africa adopted a social policy frame that emphasized collective solutions and equity. This chapter draws on qualitative data collected in Johannesburg in 2016 as part of a larger five-country study of neoliberalism, restructuring, and social services in the context of austerity. Our data show that social development and the politics of the post-apartheid society have shaped community social services in socially engaged, bottom-up ways that emphasize both service autonomy and shared social responsibility, in a context of scarce and unstable resources. Employing the voices of the social service workers interviewed, this chapter explores working conditions and work organization in three nongovernment agencies and the ways that austerity, the South African state, and social development policies underlay the differences between them. The chapter also analyzes successful approaches to social development undertaken by the community agencies and their workers, as well as resistance strategies enacted by social service workers in the face of scarce and unstable resources, continuing inequity, government inaction, and growing austerity.