The strained relationship between the Department of Social Development (DSD) and Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs) in South Africa poses a risk to their ability to collaborate to deliver government's constitutional obligations to meet people's social and welfare needs. A more collaborative approach between governments and civil society to address social development challenges is supported by contemporary approaches to Public Administration and Management. Renowned sociologist Peter Evans' expansive scholarship on embedded autonomy and developmental states proffers that a state sufficiently embedded in an intimate partnership with non-state actors is more likely to achieve its development goals. Within the conceptual frame of what it means to be a developmental state, this paper examines how trust and solidarity between the state and civil society is a necessary feature of the capable developmental state. Employing both an i