"People are Being Abandoned Where They Need Us Most" : Exploring the Percevied Consequences of a Decreased Swedish Development Aid Budget in South Africa

Sammanfattning

This thesis concerns the issue of international development and the decreases in the Swedish development aid budget. It asks how development workers from the Swedish civil society organization Olof Palme International Center (OPC) and six of their partner organizations in South Africa perceives the potential consequences of the anticipated budget cuts. The material for this qualitative case study has been conducted during an eight weeklong field study. The theoretical concepts of structural violence, ‘bottom-up’ development and the links between security and development are used as a theoretical guideline for the analysis of the material. The qualitative method of reflexive thematic analysis is employed to analyze the material consisting of thirteen semi-structured interviews and four complete observations of organizations program activities. The results of the analysis show that the interviewees perceive internal risks for their respective organizations in forced reprioritization, minimization or dismantling. These risks are then foreseen to culminate in society, within local communities, disrupting development and in alignment with Johan Galtung’s definition of structural violence, create conditions of injustice that in turn risk to foster direct, personal violence.