UmsebenziOnlineBig.jpg
Siyakholwa Jeremy Cronin, Umsebenzi Online, Johannesburg, 9 October 2014 Last week Woolworths released its annual report. In it company chairperson Simon Susman laments the passing of SA's post-1994 "miracle": "We're now in danger of turning that tide backwards and are beginning to seriously constrain growth." He claims SA's labour regime makes it impossible to provide employment for the millions unemployed. "We need courage to change this", he writes. "Let's have a Department of Employment rather than a Department of Labour and see where that philosophical shift takes us!" I was reading Susman's call for a "philosophical shift" on the way to Keiskammahoek for last week's launch of the next five-year phase of the expanded public works programme (EPWP). Working together with non-profit organisations, government has committed to ensuring six million work opportunities through public employment programmes by 2019. Keiskammehoek was chosen for the national launch because of the exemplary community work programme underway there since 2009. The programme invites us to make a philosophical shift about what we mean by "work" - a shift very different to that proposed by Woolworths' chairperson. Back in 2006 Brian du Plessis retired from Barlow Rand where he'd worked for 25 years. He and his wife Jeri quit Gauteng for Qoboqobo village in Keiskammahoek. Living out of a caravan in an abandoned sawmill shed, the couple set up a non-profit foundation, Siyakholwa. The intention was to help establish farming cooperatives. After a series of trials and errors - like the bumper crop of cabbages for which they couldn't find a market - Siyakholwa connected up with government's community work programme (CWP), part of the wider EPWP. Today, 1500 participants in 37 villages scattered across the hills of Keiskammahoek receive CWP stipends for eight days a month of community work. Each village has a committee that selects participants and identifies community work. Schools are repaired. Households in need of home-based care are tended to. There are food gardens in the schools and crèches providing free lunch-time meals. Siyakholwa still operates out of the old sawmill premises. Brian and Jeri have been joined by others as trainers and administrators - among them Odwa Njoba a local villager and now administration director; Bonisile Norushe, an MK comrade I last met in exile; and Lumka Maso, a farmer, also active in the Amahlati hawkers and crafters associations. The sheds have been renovated and are used as work-shops for training in welding and other trades. Out in the grounds there's an experimental vegetable patch, an orchard, an essential oil distillery, and beehives. The Siyakholwa centre acts as a hub where CWP participants are trained in composting, soil conservation, bee-keeping, and even computer literacy. The ambition is to train at least two part-time handymen for every village. The eight days a month of paid community work provides basic income support to hundreds of village households, while allowing for other days to work in their own fields or pursue other activities. As participants attest, the programme has helped foster personal dignity and rebuild community cohesion. There's now a sense of ownership and shared responsibility for the village school, crèche, or clinic. Over the 19th century this was a region that suffered the brunt of "frontier" wars. The poverty in today's communities is the legacy of dramatic and prolonged colonial dispossession. It was a process that forced millions out of socially useful, homestead work into distant employment for someone else's profit. It's the latter that Susman holds up as the ideal. In the hills of Keiskammahoek 37 villages are undertaking a very different "philosophical shift", proving valuable work is not necessarily the same as employment. Comrade Jeremy Cronin is SACP 1st Deputy General Secretary and Deputy Minister of Public Works. This article was first published by the Cape Times 'Left Turn' 8 October 2014. From: http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=4527#two -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
