Delusions of development: Neoliberal development discourse and privatization in South Africa

Neoliberalism is the presently hegemonic discourse of development. This discourse articulates a number of economic measures: fiscal austerity, export-oriented production and privatization of public sector services among other strategies. Through the product of a Western economic imaginary, neoliberal ideas and practices have entered into the economic and social life even of recently liberated societies, such as South Africa. The capturing of the development imaginary of the post-apartheid South African administration is the object of this investigation. To examine this process I develop a conceptual and methodological structure borrowing on Foucauldian discourse theory and the Gramscian concept of hegemony. I engage with neoliberalism at an infrastructural level, investigating one specific technological device of neoliberalism---privatization---exploring its deployment at the global and national scales broadly, and concentrating my analysis on the local articulation of sub-discourses in Durban. Furthermore, I explore whether a link exists between neoliberalism, privatization and community resistance in the local community of Chatsworth, a suburb in Durban. The study elucidates the discursive nature of neoliberalism, privatization and resistance, concluding that the application of neoliberal development discourse through privatization has generated resistance conceptualized as counter-discourse not only in the sense of active resistance, but also in terms of providing critical alternatives.