South African Social Welfare Policy: An Analysis Using the Ethic of Care

Abstract

New policies have been developed in South Africa since the demise of apartheid. This article examines one of these policy documents - the White Paper for Social Welfare - using the lens of a feminist political ethic of care. The ethic of care is used to trace the normative framework of this policy document and to make judgements about how adequately issues of care, welfare and citizenship are dealt with. Policy texts display authoritative ways of talking about care and contain a range of gendered assumptions in the way that they represent social practices of care. The article proposes that the White Paper for Social Welfare inserts care principally into a familialist framework. This framework does not address current South African social problems in an adequate manner, nor does it correspond with social justice principles that are endorsed in the White Paper. The contribution that the ethic of care can make in solving the problems that are identified in the analysis of the White Paper for Social Welfare is elaborated on. It is proposed that care should be positioned in notions of citizenship rather than family or community. In this way, the responsibility for care would be deprivatized and made a common concern, centrally placed in human life.