{"id":9785,"date":"2009-07-15T06:07:24","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T11:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=9785"},"modified":"2009-07-15T06:07:24","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T11:07:24","slug":"richard-pithouse-south-africa-we-need-a-conversation-about-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=9785","title":{"rendered":"Richard Pithouse: South Africa: We Need a Conversation about Development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Richard Pithouse &#8211; The South African Civil Society Information Service<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.anarkismo.net\/article\/13519\">19 June 2009<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p> <em>Vast amounts of cash and political energies that could have been directed towards meeting the basic needs of people living in intolerable conditions have been wasted on stadiums for 2010<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>From the Communist Party across to the corporate spin-doctors and down to the Development Committees in the shack settlements, more or less everybody in South Africa speaks the language of development. In some ways this is a good thing. It indicates a hard won agreement that the realities of inequality in our society are so cruel and perverse that any social project can only be credible if it will ameliorate these divisions and the suffering they cause.<\/p>\n<p>But one of the key problems with this consensus is that it carries a degree of authoritarianism while lacking a clear content. The result is that it is simultaneously difficult to be against development without seeming anti-social and to know exactly what counts as development. And as soon as we are all supposed to line up in support of some concept that is not clearly defined elites are able to define that concept to their advantage. When the rich are at their most rampant they tend to take the view that supporting development requires the removal of the barriers that limit their right to accumulate. They argue that everyone will benefit from their wealth as it trickles down. But we all know that in reality this approach to development results in the poor getting poorer precisely because of the manner in which the rich are getting richer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.anarkismo.net\/article\/13519\">Read the article<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/anarchy_africa\">h\/t<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Richard Pithouse &#8211; The South African Civil Society Information Service 19 June 2009 Vast amounts of cash and political energies that could have been directed towards meeting the basic needs of people living in intolerable conditions have been wasted &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=9785\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-2xP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9785"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9788,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9785\/revisions\/9788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}