Deserving and undeserving welfare states: Cash transfers and hegemonic struggles in South Africa
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Date
2022
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Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
The South African social grant programme appeared as if it might suddenly end on 1
April 2017. The potential termination of grants kicked off a significant public outcry by
members of parliament, the judiciary, the treasury, the press and civil society
organisations. At the time, popular explanations of this crisis contended that grants were
about to stop because of corruption and state capture. Instead I argue that the 2017 grant
crisis extended and amplified the hegemonic struggle within the African National
Congress (ANC) between two contradictory neoliberal tendencies, which grew out of the
post-apartheid transition and the global conjunctural moment of the end of the Cold War.
Following Gillian Hart, I define these as a �liberal�, technocratic neoliberal capitalist
tendency and a �populist�, affective neoliberal capitalist tendency. Adherents of each
tendency wielded the discourse of deservedness � common in welfare discourse for
centuries � both against people receiving welfare and against the political formations
vying to deliver welfare. Each claimed to be more deserving of the task of delivering
grants and therefore more deserving of holding state power. Ultimately, the 2017 grant
crisis helped to lead to a shift in political power, shoring up South Africa�s very unequal
social formation without addressing the exploitation upon which it was based.
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Keywords
Welfare, Cash transfer, State capture, Post-colonial state formation, South Africa
Citation
Torkelson, E. et al. (2022). Deserving and undeserving welfare states: Cash transfers and hegemonic struggles in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 48(1), 43�60. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2022.2004772