History of Social Welfare Policy in South Africa
Authors: Chitonge H. 
Published: April 2024

South Africa’s social sector has evolved from simple and disjointed nonstate initiatives into a complex set of interventions, institutions, programs and services. The review presented in this paper shows that the development of social policy and institutions in South Africa has been shaped by the political and economic situation both locally and internationally. Like social policy in many other countries around the world, the state was initially reluctant to accept responsibility for the provision of social welfare services; most of the services were provided in a fragmented way by nonstate actors, including the Church. But from the 1920s, the state started to gradually accept the responsibility to provide social services including education, health care, housing and social welfare. Although different South African governments have, from colonial times to the 21st century, consistently rejected the idea of making South Africa a welfare state, the state has, with time, increasingly taken on greater responsibility, not only in terms of regulating all social services but also the provision of all public services in the country.

Of all the social services, it is the cash transfer program (social grants) that currently attracts political and public attention in the country. However, it is the provision of education services that has consistently accounted for the largest share of public expenditure since the beginning of the democratic dispensation in 1994. For instance, in the 2022 to 2023 national budget, education services accounted for 20.4 percent of total public expenditures, followed by social development (social welfare) at 16.9 percent, and health care services at 12 percent. Social policy expenditure together accounts for almost half of government expenditure, which is roughly about 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The social policy scholarship in the country has historically focused on social welfare, a situation that gives the impression that social policy is synonymous with social welfare policy. Although this article focuses on the history of social welfare policy in South Africa, it is important to note that social policy is a broader field of public policy that includes education, health care, and social welfare (which in South Africa is also referred to as social development).

One of the fundamental features that defines the history of social policy in South Africa is racial discrimination; institutionalized during colonial and apartheid periods, it has continued to shape and reproduce racial disparities in access to social services even thirty years after the fall of apartheid. While the democratic South African government has increasingly accepted and taken greater responsibility to provide social services, social policy in the country is characterized by a persistent tension arising from the commitment to neoliberal principles of fiscal discipline and austerity on one hand and espousing social democratic principles which emphasize the provision of meaningful support to citizens both as a form of social investment, as well as an instrument for addressing the legacies of colonialism and apartheid on the other. Since the dawn of democracy, this tension has been exacerbated by the growing calls to address racial injustices of the past, as evident in the number of protests, against the background of persistently weak economic growth since 2010.