An evaluation of the alignment of the Gauteng Youth employment strategy

Abstract

When developing policies or policy programmes, the South African Government often refers to public participation as an important part of the process. However, public participation in policy making in the country has often been described as inadequate and creating a false perception of public participation. This is because oftentimes policy makers think the objective data they have is sufficient for adopting policy positions and regard subjective evidence (people’s own thoughts and perceptions) as superfluous. The challenge created by implementing policies that are not in line with people’s thoughts and perceptions is that governments roll out policies that are not responsive to the needs of its intended beneficiaries, while they also create a possibility for non-participation, at the least, or opposition to the policy or programme by the public at the worst. This study sought to understand how sensitive the Gauteng Youth Employment Strategy (GYES), as a developmental policy, is to the Gauteng youth’s own perceptions of the social environment and their own circumstances. It did this by juxtaposing the aims of the GYES vis-à-vis the expectations of unemployed Gauteng youth; the assumptions underlying the GYES vis-à-vis the perceptions and expectations of the unemployed youth; as well as obtaining insights – for purposes of improving the GYES’ responsiveness – on unemployed Gauteng youth’s perceptions of socio-economic trends in South Africa and how they should be addressed. Because there seems to have been no considerable effort to understand the subjective views of the unemployed youth of Gauteng in the formulation of the GYES, the policy programme is shown to be misaligned with their expectations on a number of matters of significance. So while the programme set out to address a real need or problem, a lack of insights which can only be gained from considering subjective views, means that some of the programme interventions stand little chance of being implemented successfully. As such, the study demonstrates that important insights can be gained by considering subjective measures and views from the public in policy formulation.