Sustainable Social Development

The question of Sustainable Development is still very contentious in the developing world.  In South Africa, after Apartheid, political, economic, social and legislative re-dress were mainly aimed at dealing with inequality and discrimination, to create a broad participation base, and, in the process, enhance sustainability in the country.  Currently, twenty years after democracy, these efforts have not yielded, by far, the positive results that were expected.  This paper critically investigates this situation.  Reasons for the gap - amongst others - include 'wrong' approaches (e.g., macro and top-down) are still being implemented, a huge division between policy and practice, 'inappropriate' ties between government and other sectors and poor service delivery.