'ACTIVE' LABOUR MARKET POLICIES: LESSONS FOR SOUTH AFRICA?

Commencing with an overview of current definitions of active labour market policies (ALMPS), policies aimed at ‘activating’ the unemployed, and some of the economically inactive currently receiving welfare benefits, this paper glances at the history of the transition from so-called passive to active benefit regimes, then looks at which of the many ALMPs ‘work’, and in what settings. The processes by which subjects for activation are selected are examined, and brief reference is made to the techniques for evaluating ALMPs. Attention is drawn to the coercion behind the discourse of rights and responsibilities that animates the ‘workfare’ and ‘welfare-to-work’ policies of the USA and UK, respectively. The progress of the UK’s ‘welfare-to-work’ programme, especially that for young people, is examined. Possible consequences for the programme of the crisis currently devastating the world economy are considered. Attention then turns to South Africa’s largest active labour market intervention, the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP). Its first five-year phase having been completed, a second phase, more ambitious by far than its predecessor, has recently commenced. Critical analysis suggests that contrary to the hype, the programme has thus far made little lasting impact on the poverty and unemployment it is supposed to address. Once past the EPWP, the equally large problem of what to do about the millions of young people in South Africa who are not in education, employment or training, is considered. The poor education that most of them will have had, places them in the category considered most difficult to ‘activate’. Lack of demand for simple undifferentiated (unskilled) labour, coupled with institutional weakness, is argued to make the ambition of launching anything more than some small proportion of young people into income-generating economic activity, using active labour market policies, a pipedream. The recently-formed National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), the body that is supposed to play the major role in ensuring “seamless integration, sustainability and responsiveness to the demands and aspirations of South Africa’s youth” will probably set back the development of youth, at least in its first years of operation. A little attention is then devoted to the question of the limits to ‘activation’ in South Africa, the chief of these being the lack of ‘suitable’ jobs into which people may be placed, and the weakness of the institutions that should be responsible for placing them, were such jobs to exist.