Introduction: Neoliberalism, Social Democracy and Poverty

Abstract

Felix started work as a gardener for a semi-private school in Cape Town in the 1980s. In 1994, he was living in a shack, in Imizamo Yethu, a largely unserviced ‘informal settlement’ in the Hout Bay valley. Soon after, his shack burnt down when a fire swept through the settlement, forcing him to rebuild and refurnish. In 2014, twenty years after the first democratic elections, he was still a gardener, but he was living in very different conditions. Much of the informal settlement of Imizamo Yethu had been transformed into a neighbourhood of two- and three-bedroomed houses, through what was in effect a public-private partnership that combined largely public funding with private management. Over the course of the preceding twenty years Felix’s wages had risen substantially in real terms, and he had a growing private pension fund. His employer had also assisted him in building a larger house than would have been possible with public funds alone. This enabled him to supplement his earnings with rent paid by tenants in his house (as well as in rooms built in the yard). Felix had also bought himself a second-hand car, and had extended the family’s home in the rural Eastern Cape. Felix was now a respectable, home-owning, working man and he voted proudly in each election. His life was still far from easy, however, and he struggled to pay the interest on the loans he had taken out to buy a car and furniture, and to build in the Eastern Cape.