The White Paper on Population Policy: The Economic-Demographic Perspective

The authors of the White Paper on Population Policy have invoked the Programme of Action, as enunciated at the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, as their frame of reference to formulate a NEW policy which dispraised the Population Development Programme of the pre-1994 government and attempted to distance themselves as far as possible from family planning. It is argued here that their reading of the Programme of Action was flawed in that the programme had not been considered within the historic context of resolutions and the use of language, in the presence of contending forces, at successive international conferences on population problems. The new policy espoused is a socio-economic agenda, not a population policy with a direct attack on proliferating numbers, as if the latter have little role to play in the level of living standards. South Africa has, it appears, to revert to the 1974 Bucharest paradigm, where the Third World participants found solace in the slogan: “development is the best pill” (instead of the more appropriate and practical prescription “the pill is the best development”), which has long since been superseded by events in the real world.