CapeTimes.jpg
DA march plan is attention-seeking
Jeremy Cronin, Cape Times, Cape Town, 29 January 2014
In her mid-term review in November, the DA's City of Cape Town mayor,
Patricia de Lille, told the media her "biggest success was in creating 37
000 Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) jobs for people who were employed
temporarily in various city projects" (Cape Times, November 21).
Last week, DA leader Helen Zille announced her intention to lead a march on
Luthuli House, the ANC's headquarters in Johannesburg.
Intriguingly, the purpose of the march, according to Zille's statement, was
to "expose Jacob Zuma's (ANC election) manifesto promise of 6 million 'work
opportunities' as bogus".
So what makes the promise bogus? "These are not real jobs", Zille tells us.
"They are temporary public works placements that will do little to grow the
economy and lift people out of poverty permanently and sustainably."
Clearly, the DA mayor and the DA premier are radically at odds here.
The one sees her most important mayoral achievement as the provision of tens
of thousands of temporary public works jobs. The other dismisses these
projects in principle as "bogus". What accounts for the blatant
contradiction?
Part of the explanation obviously has to do with Zille's pursuit of an
attention-seeking election stunt - any pretext will do. If Julius Malema,
plus bodyguards, plus a handful of followers can go to Nkandla, why
shouldn't Zille march on Luthuli House?
I'll leave it to others to judge the wisdom of the proposed march. Many in
the DA are clearly less than convinced of its merits. I do want to say that
we should practise political tolerance in our democracy and, in any case,
over-reaction from the ANC will simply play into the hands of those seeking
attention.
What needs deeper examination is the glaring contradiction between De
Lille's justifiable pride in achieving 37 000 EPWP work opportunities in
Cape Town and Zille's haughty and discordant dismissal of these public
employment programmes.
In the first place, Zille is less than honest when she claims that Zuma (she
personalises the matter) is once more "misleading" South Africans. Nowhere
in the ANC election manifesto is it claimed that the targeted six million
EPWP "work opportunities" over the next five years will be formal-sector
jobs or permanent.
With high unemployment endemic, even in many advanced economies, political
commentator Professor Steven Friedman was recently spot on when he debunked
the illusion that only formal sector, waged employment should be regarded as
"work".
Millions of South Africans and billions around the world are excluded from
waged work. This does not mean these billions are (or have to be)
unproductive.
Zille's statement claims that public works programmes "will do little to
grow the economy". This betrays a market fundamentalism. Implicit in this
fundamentalism is that labour that is not a waged commodity does not perform
"real work", and what it produces has little value. This is an assumption
increasingly in question internationally. GDP statistics do not capture the
economic contribution of volunteer work, for instance, or the unpaid home
and child-care work loaded onto women. The huge value embedded in our
natural ecosystems is also not reflected in GDP accounting. But the
unsustainable exploitation of natural resources - through mining or
over-fishing, for instance - is happily totted up in the positive growth
column.
Clearly, we have to think about what is of economic and social value in
different ways. Recent CSIR research estimates that the Working for Water
EPWP programme has contributed billions of rand worth of value (unrecorded
in our GDP statistics) through increasing water resources by removing
invasive alien plants. The real value of our public employment programmes
needs to be assessed in terms of social impact. What happens after a work
opportunity to the participants? What is the impact on marginalised
communities when community members help construct and maintain assets, or
provide desperately needed services like home-based care, school feeding,
early childhood caring or neighbourhood safety?
I think that we can do much better in terms of monitoring and evaluating
these developmental impacts of the EPWP programme, as well as improving the
synergies between them and other government and NGO initiatives - including
adult training in community colleges, and co-operative and small and
micro-business development.
Zille dismisses public employment programmes on the grounds that they will
not "lift people out of poverty permanently and sustainably". This is akin
to the all-or-nothing reasoning once advanced by the PAC for boycotting the
CODESA negotiations. The PAC secretary-general of the time explained "there
is no way negotiation can be regarded as a panacea for our social malaise.
Therefore it will fail."
Zille's rejectionism, based on a similar panacea yardstick ("permanently and
sustainably" forever) is no better. Of course, public employment programmes
on their own are not the total solution to unemployment or poverty. But they
are making an important contribution to social development. How do we
improve on their impact? How do we ensure better synergies with other
job-creating and sustainable livelihood strategies?
And (a final rhetorical question) aren't these the issues we should be
debating thoughtfully, instead of embarking upon an ill-considered,
attention-seeking march?
. Jeremy Cronin is the Deputy Minister of Public Works. He was a
Member of Parliament and is the Deputy General-Secretary of the SA Communist
Party.
Cape Times
From:
http://www.iol.co.za/news/da-march-plan-is-attention-seeking-1.1638982#.UuoW
ofmSyD9
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