Paper short abstract:

South Africa has enacted a myriad of socio-economic policies aimed at improving the lives of its ordinary citizens. However, these policies have all failed to create social justice and address a critical question of land, which could be a catalyst to get the majority out of poverty and inequality.

Paper long abstract:

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996 unequivocally states that any political democracy will not succeed in an environment where the majority of citizenry live in poverty. Furthermore, that land is one of those catalysts that may pull the majority of citizens out of poverty trap creating social justice. Based on these prescripts of the Constitution, various socio-economic policies were enacted to dismantle the triple setbacks of South Africa’s democracy: joblessness, inequality and poverty. These policies, Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth and Redistribution Programme (GEAR), Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (“AsgiSA”), Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) and lately the National Development Plan (NDP), were expected to entrench social justice through equitable distribution of economic opportunities for the majority of South African citizens. However, these policies do not address the basic challenge of landlessness which is a great form of social justice. One of the major challenges impeding the success of these socio-economic policies pertains to how the South African society has become polarised.

The polarisation of the South African society is a major hindrance to the successful implementation of various socio-economic policies. Various role players have divergent views as to how social justice could be achieved, thereby, alleviating the hardships that the ordinary citizens face on a daily basis. Business, civil society and non-governmental organisations sector, political parties and government do not agree on a way forward to entrench social justice. Therefore, social justice for the ordinary citizens is sacrificed in this stalemate.