Protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded through the community work programme: a comparative case study of Munsieville and Bekkersdal
Date
2018
Authors
Masondo, Themba
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Abstract
The idea of the government acting as an Employer of Last Resort (ELR), commonly known as
‘public works’, has become a prominent feature of the ‘impulse for social protection’ in the
global South. The dissertation focuses on a long-term ELR programme in South Africa called
the Community Work Programme (CWP) – a distinctively and innovatively designed
component of the orthodox Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP). Based on field
research involving the triangulation of a survey questionnaire, in-depth semi-structured
interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic non-participant observation – this study adopts the
comparative case study approach, imbued in the extended case method, to investigate the
CWP’s potentialities in protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded in Munsieville
and Bekkersdal—located in the West Rand region of the Gauteng Province, South Africa
The central question posed in this dissertation is whether the CWP has other
transformative potentialities beyond its ameliorative role. The dissertation advances three
connected arguments. First, the dissertation argues that in addition to protecting livelihoods,
the CWP possesses transformative potential in fostering development from below. The CWP
participants in Munsieville tended to possess greater autonomous capabilities in adapting the
CWP to respond to a myriad of local social challenges. Secondly, the dissertation argues that
the mainstream theoretical approaches to livelihood promotion through the ELR tend to ignore
cooperative development as a potential vector for promoting livelihoods of the excluded. In
this respect, the dissertation presents the case of three nascent CWP-linked cooperatives in
Munsieville to illustrate this argument. Lastly, the dissertation argues that the
operationalisation of the Organisation Workshop (OW) methodology in Munsieville helps
clarify the significant variance in the outcomes of the CWP in the two townships.
Key words: community work programme, employer of last resort, organisation workshop,
protecting livelihoods and promoting livelihoods.
Description
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
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Citation
Masondo, Themba Johnson, (2018) Protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded through the community work programme: comparative case study of Munsieville and Bekkersda, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, https://hdl.handle.net/10539/26270.