Questioning pro-poor responses to the global economic slump

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Periodical article

Title:	Questioning pro-poor responses to the global economic slump
Author:	Jacobs, Peter
Year:	2009
Periodical:	Review of African Political Economy
Volume:	36
Issue:	122
Pages:	611-619
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	economic recession government policy poverty reduction populism
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240903346210
Abstract:	Integrated into the global economy as a mining exporter and heavily reliant on foreign capital inflows, South Africa has been unable to escape the effects of the global economic crisis. As the local economic downturn started deepening, the State reacted by adopting a minimal set of anti-crisis responses favoured by the global political and corporate elite that steer clear of threatening or transcending the reign of capital. The cost of the slump is set to be downloaded onto the poor, the majority of whom are mired in chronic structural poverty. At the same time, the State has adopted pro-poor rhetoric to articulate its interventions to salvage capitalism. This form of neoliberal populism helps to politically disorientate and disarm the trade unions and emerging popular movements and shields the postapartheid governing elite in their accumulation of power and wealth. Bibliogr., notes. [ASC Leiden abstract]