Two major world meetings now underway, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, represent the axes of global plenty and global need.

South Africa, with the world’s second highest rate of inequality, has elements of both Davos and Porto Alegre. If one expands the analogy, then Major Parkie is a citizen of Porto Alegre – the face of need and of want in South Africa.

Wearing a translucent apron with the words ‘’Rosebank car watch”, he is a member of South Africa’s one million strong informal sector, where the average wage is R250 (28 U.S. dollars) a month. He works in Rosebank, a commercial centre with the headquarters of several top companies – a Davos world, yet he does not share in its prosperity.

Parkie has sad eyes and a sadder story. He once had a full-time job at a garage in Soweto, a shantytown in the outskirts of Johannesburg, but lost it after an accident. He has lost a son too and his pitiful earnings of 30 rands (3.3 U.S. dollars) on a bad day and 70 rands (about 8 U.S. dollars) on a good day make him wish for a ‘’proper” job, where a salary may be low, but at least it is regular. That way, he could provide better for his remaining child, wife and extended family.

‘’It’s better to get money month-end,” he says. President Thabo Mbeki’s great challenge is to get South Africa’s axes closer together, to close the wealth gap and that should be through a mix of job creation and through investment in social services, say progressive commentators.

But activists like Andile Mngxitama and Ann Eveleth of the National Land Committee lay the fate of Parkie and other poor South Africans at the feet of the political leadership which has chosen what they call ‘’neo-liberal” policy options.

Under this rubric are South Africa’s strict monetary and fiscal policies, which in the past five years have constrained public spending as government tackled debt. Debt payments now make up a much smaller percentage of gross domestic product (gdp) and government argues that this has freed up funds for social services which are growing in real terms after several years of stagnant spending.

In addition, the activists argue that by moving to World Bank inspired policies of cost-recovery for services like water and electricity, it is meant that people are losing services. Parkie says he gets free water, but pays for electricity, which he cannot always afford.

He is one of the lucky ones because research by the statutory Human Sciences Research Council says that 10 million people suffered water dis-connections in the period between 1994 and February 2002. In the same period, government provided water to seven million new recipients suggesting that the cost recovery policies were reversing development gains.

The Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) also questions whether cost recovery has seen a decline in electricity consumption since 1994. Despite the fact that 350,000 people get power every year, consumption ‘s down, suggesting that people cannot afford electricity. ‘’The explanation clearly lies in the growing number of disconnections and self-imposed low consumption by the poor as a result of the inability to pay for electricity, ” say Mngxitama and Eveleth in a report.

Government is aware of the problem and has promised a free basic supply of water and electricity, though the provision has been slow. Mbeki has declared the next ten years as one dedicated to the fight against poverty. This focus change – from only macro-economic policies to social policies – is attributed to several reasons. The first is that research published last November by Statistics South Africa shows most black South Africans have grown poorer in the past 10 years as joblessness has become structural.

Labour leaders outside government also warn that the state’s privatisation programme has increased the joblessness crisis because parastatals like the telecomms operator, Telkom, the electricity parastatal Eskom and the transport company Transnet have all laid off thousands of workers to become more commercial in orientation.

In addition, the job market has shrunk as companies have mechanised, the state has cut the size of the civil service and the economy is restructured away from manufacturing to a services-driven economy.

A social safety net is vital, say government officials who say that a better welfare system and more public works programmes are in the offing. Another reason for a new focus is the symbolic importance of the election of Luiz Ignatio da Silva Lula to the presidency in Brazil.

His stress on keeping the balance between economic and social imperatives has been influential on the ruling African National Congress, which is similar in character to the Brazilian Workers Party. This is because it has the support of the dominant trade unions in the country and several former labour leaders hold cabinet positions.

Waiting for the changes are people like Caroline S’Thembiso who lack the skills the new economy requires because of a past of apartheid education. She sells the newspaper ‘’Homeless Talk” at a busy Johannesburg intersection. With her are three children who spend their days on the street because there is no one to take care of them in the Soweto shack-land she lives in.

S’Thembiso says she used to sell meat, but the newspaper and the hangers she sells give her a better turnover. She is homeless, cooks with paraffin and fetches water from a communal tap, yet she still feels government is doing ‘’OK”.

And that is because her gurgling, chubby 11-month old baby Sisipho gets a R120 (13.3 U.S. dollars) a month child grant. In survey after survey, people like S’Thembiso show themselves impatient for change but trusting of government’s best intentions. For Mbeki, the political challenge is to live up to this trust and to find the bridge between the worlds of plenty and of want.