ECONOMIC INCLUSION
Winning strategies focus on bringing the jobless into cycle of production
A generation after the end of apartheid, SA remains a country characterised by mass social and economic exclusion, a country in which only a minority of people can be said to be effectively included. Half the population lives below the poverty line; more than 9-million adults are unemployed — more than 35% of the workforce — and nearly half of those who work earn less than R3,500 a month; a third rely on social grants to make ends meet; and, by some calculations, 60% live in homes with uncertain and insecure forms of tenure. With economic and employment growth hovering around zero, and with risks accumulating on the government’s balance sheet, SA is going backwards. More of the same will only deepen levels of exclusion. How, then, should we think about inclusion? Too often, when politicians and policy makers talk about inclusion, their ideas seem to be built on the assumption that the process of inclusion happens after the production of goods and services has been completed. For the...
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