These background materials on the Community Work Programme were prepared as part of induction training for non-profit agencies appointed to implement the CWP, and as an introduction for other stakeholders. The materials were originally developed for the Department of Co-operative Governance by TIPS in 2013. They have been partly updated as background reading to provide insights into the programme. In relation to many of the themes covered, DGOG policy guidelines now exist - these should be reffered to for clarity on interpretation of any of the issues covered, to take into account how the programme has evolved. 

The roots of the industrial conflict in the North West province platinum mining belt in 2012 that led to the Marikana massacre cannot be found in the normal narrative of low wages and circular migrant labour entrenched under apartheid. Although South African miners earned far less than their equals in industrialised economies, their median wage was around twice as high as in other sectors in South Africa. Moreover, the miners’ migration to the North West platinum mines in the past decade differed significantly from the historic oscillating migrancy enforced by apartheid legislation before 1994. 

This paper assesses the factors behind the prolonged strikes in 2012 and 2014. It finds that the key issues were:

• The failure to provide human settlements to accommodate the influx of miners as the mines expanded rapidly during the commodity boom,
• The levelling out of pay increases when the commodity boom came to an end in 2011, combined with profound inequalities in work organisation and remuneration which meant the miners did not believe the mines faced a squeeze, and
• The failure systematically to re-organise supervisory practices and work organisation in mining to deal with the oppression, poor communications and unjustified inequalities entrenched under apartheid.

To a large extent, the experience of the platinum belt paralleled challenges faced worldwide, as the surge in metals prices that lasted from the early 2000s through 2011 led to rapid growth in many mines in relatively remote rural areas. In the North West however, responses to these challenges by employers, workers, communities and the state built on practices and perceptions developed as part of the colonial and apartheid migrant labour system that historically centred largely on mining. Taken together, these responses failed to create living and working environments able to support either sustainable growth in platinum mining or secure, decent work and vibrant communities. 

TIPS was commissioned by the Presidency (Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation) to better understand migrant labour on the platinum belt and why the community factors and living conditions were a factor that contributed to the major strikes in the platinum sector in 2010 and 2014. The study findings were workshoped with industry and government stakeholders. (2014-2015)

See research report

See World at Work article

In 2014, South Africa remained one of the most unequal countries in the world, an outlier by global standards in terms of both overall inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient and levels of joblessness. For proponents of industrialisation as central to long-term development, this situation raises two questions. First, how does manufacturing as presently constituted affect employment and the distribution of income and assets directly and indirectly? Second, is the traditional industrial-policy paradigm sufficiently geared to supporting inclusive growth?

These questions are explored in this working paper by Neva Makgetla, TIPS Trade and Industrial Policy Programme Manager.

TIPS was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme to undertake a study on the impact of social and economic inequality development in South Africa. (2014). See research report

In the context of a global jobs crisis, there is renewed interest in the role of public employment in providing work opportunities. This context has also seen a range innovation in public employment, with new forms of work and new approaches to implementation and delivering different kinds of outcomes. The Community Work Programme (CWP) in South Africa is an example of such innovation.
 
The CWP was designed to use public employment as an instrument of community development, and uses participatory local processes to identify work that needs to be done to improve the quality of life in poor communities. This has resulted in a multi-sectorial work menu with a strong emphasis on care, food security, community safety and a range of other work activities. The inclusion of work in the social sector within a public employment programme creates new ways of strengthening social outcomes.
 
The CWP also differs from other public employment programmes with its focus on providing ongoing access to part-time work for those who need it at local level, providing an income floor in ways that draw from lessons of social protection. This design feature is a specific response to the structural nature of unemployment in South Africa, which means that for many participants, there is no easy exit from public employment into other economic opportunities; instead, the CWP supplements as well as strengthening their other livelihood strategies.
 
The CWP is still a relatively new programme, institutionalised in the Department of Co-operative Governance in South Africa since April 2010. This article examines the policy rationale for the CWP, describes its key design features, and explores the forms of local innovation to which it is giving rise in relation to the forms of work undertaken and the associated community development outcomes. It also explores some of the challenges of implementation and the policy questions to which this innovation in public employment is giving rise.

Download a copy: The Community Work Programme: Building a Society that Works

This paper looks at the strengths and weaknesses of current methodologies in capturing the kinds of local economic development impacts from the CWP. It aims to fill the gap of methodologies available for measuring economic multipliers in a local economy. (The Employment Promotion Programme (EPP) Research)

After the Great Depression in the 1930s, part of the recovery in the United States of America relied upon a massive programme of public works, under the Works Progress Administration. Its impact was not just as a stimulus; it also provided a focus of social participation and inclusion. Yet, in the context of the current Great Recession, public works have been only a limited part of the response across most of the developed world.

Instead, it is in the developing world that the most interesting innovation is taking place in terms of new approaches to public employment, including in India, South Africa and Ethiopia. These too perform the functions of a stimulus, targeted into local economies, impacting directly on employment and trickling up into the wider economy from there. They too are providing a focus of social participation and inclusion, in ways that are breaking new ground: changing rights frameworks, unlocking new forms of agency at community level, undertaking new forms of work and placing a social value on labour even where markets are not doing so. These processes are delivering sometimes unanticipated forms of transformation and systemic change, in some cases very locally, in others at a societal level.

In the process, longstanding debates about the role of employment in society, the scope for markets to achieve full employment, and the meaning of the right to work come up for new scrutiny also.

These issues are explored in a paper by Kate Philip, which draws on innovations in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India and the Community Work Programme in South Africa to do so.

The implications of this are likely to have the most traction in the developing world; in the face of failing austerity policies, however, it's just possible that this is an area in which the developed world can also learn some lessons from the south.

The Transformative Potential of Public Employment Programmes, by Kate Philip, is published as part of the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice's Occasional Paper Series. No 1/2013

Download a copy:  The Transformative Potential of Public Employment Programmes

A key part of the motivation to potentially scale up the CWP to a million participants included a proposed strategy of support to schools. This research looks at the impact of CWP's schools support at a sample of schools that have received such support. (The Employment Promotion Programme (EPP) Research)

This qualitative study assessed the impact of the Community Work Programme (CWP) on the capabilities of participants and communities. It showed the programme had significantly expanded participants capability set and had contributed to improving both individual and community wellbeing. (The Employment Promotion Programme (EPP) Research)