Social security/protection in South Africa
- Adjunct Professor Alex Van Den Heever
This paper examines the rationale for an overhaul of the system of social security in SA taking account of long-term social and economic factors.
And what has been highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Social security systems have evolved globally as a principal corrective to the distributional forces of
market economies and other forms of private action. While markets and self-organisation of various
forms are central to the healthy functioning of modern societies, they routinely generate harmful
external effects.
On the positive side, markets and self-organisation reward innovation and enterprise. On the
negative side, they can institutionalise structural winners and losers in society with resulting unfair
distributions of social risk, incomes and assets. If not addressed the resulting social harms become
embedded into the social fabric.
Read the full paper here: Social Protection