‘Africans were better off under Apartheid, according to UNDP-HDI’ - RW Johnson

The denialism of the NDR

Africans were better off under Apartheid, according to UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) Measurements; but ANC unable to confront this reality. ANC's attachment to NDR: outmoded Soviet concept

RW Johnson | Politicsweb
19 July 2011

In the mid-1990s the SACP, with Joe Slovo much to the fore, became enamoured of the Human Development Index (HDI) pioneered by the UN Development Programme because instead of ranking countries by GDP per capita the UNDP was interested in a broader measure of welfare which would include the quality of life in that country, life expectancy, child and maternal mortality rates, social equality, achievements in education and health, gender equality and so on.

The UNDP measure had two immensely appealing features for the SACP. First, it promised to rank countries like Cuba a lot higher than usual because they enjoyed equal poverty, a goodish health system and more gender equality. So this would be a better measure for what the SACP was planning to achieve in South Africa. Accordingly, the SACP paid enormous and positive attention to each successive Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP and emphasized that what the government was most keenly interested in was human development.

Thus in 1997 Jay Naidoo, then heading the RDP secretariat, declared that "The challenge is to meet the basic needs of our people and at the same time strengthen economic growth. These challenges are vital but the real issue that needs attention most is human development." (Emphasis added.)

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