Reg Rumney provides an indispensable guide to framers of RDP-correct policy documents
RDP may spell “rape, destroy and pillage” to some cynical business people, as Minister without Portfolio Jay Naidoo has suggested.
To many businessmen and women it simply spells “money”, judging by the number of opportunistic press releases that linked the RDP to all manner of weird and wonderful projects.
It will have escaped those of you who have not paid attention to the fact that the reconstruction and development programme is replete with language borrowed from the jargon of development.
Relax. Whether you understand the ramifications the “people-centred” approach of the RDP or not, you no longer need to be embarrassed by your inability to come up with documents full of high-sounding verbiage in a probably futile attempt to curry favour with the new government.
Just use the patented RDP buzzword generator provided below, which features key words taken directly from the RDP — the final version of the RDP itself, that is, rather than the draft RDP green paper, the RDP green paper, the draft RDP white paper or the draft RDP discussion document preceding the RDP white paper.
How to use: Select one word from each of the three columns — two adjectives and a noun — and, voila, you have “appropriate democratic resource allocation”, or an “ongoing integrated strategy”.
Each of these combinations mean just one thing: I have mastered the essential language of the RDP and am therefore fit and able to receive a large contract as a consultant.
The more you use in any single sentence, the greater your expertise and therefore the larger your contract.
People-driven Participatory Development
Community-oriented Physical Transformation
Transparent Gender-sensitive Framework
Comprehensive Capacity-building Culture
Appropriate Socio-economic Empowerment
Ongoing Integrated Process
Coherent Sustainable Implementation
Effective Co-operative Programme
Purposeful Democratic Plan
Achievable Realistic Restructuring
Grassroots Institutional Resource allocation
Viable Bottom-up Agenda
Fundamental Infrastructural Reconstruction
Accountable Co-ordinated Policy
Far-reaching Decision-making Support
Consistent Redistributive Goal
Responsible Macro-economic Change
Dynamic Environmental Strategy