HRPYC81 Assignment 4 2025 (741707) Answer Guide

HRPYC81 Project 4 Assignment 4 2025 (741707) Answer Guide Title: Sustainable Development and the Realisation of Basic Needs: A Critical Analysis in the South African Context Abstract This paper examines the concept of basic needs and its significance for sustainable development, with particular attention to the South African context. It explores how access to essential resources such as water, food, healthcare, education, and housing remains central to advancing human development and reducing inequality. Despite progress since the democratic transition in 1994, structural challenges such as poverty, unemployment, and inadequate service delivery continue to undermine the fulfilment of basic needs, thereby hindering broader development outcomes. The analysis highlights the theoretical underpinnings of the basic needs approach, its linkages with development policy, and the practical obstacles facing South Africa. Ultimately, the paper argues that the failure to guarantee universal access to basic needs threatens not only social justice but also economic growth and democratic stability. Introduction The basic needs approach to development emerged as a response to the limitations of purely growth-oriented models, emphasising that human well-being depends not only on income levels but also on access to essential goods and services (Todaro and Smith, 2020). In the South African context, this perspective is particularly relevant, given the country’s history of inequality and its ongoing struggle to meet the socio-economic rights enshrined in the Constitution of 1996 (South African Government, 1996). Basic needs—such as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, shelter, healthcare, and education—are recognised as fundamental to human dignity and sustainable development (World Bank, 2018). While significant policy frameworks, such as the Reconstruction