“My dream of being able to tell strangers: ‘I have a job,’ came true,” Maria Gaanbi, a Sowetan resident and single mother, told the Mail & Guardian. She is one of about 30 000 people working on a Gauteng public works initiative called the Zivuseni project — a short-term job-creation programme to combat poverty.
“When I wake up in the morning I am excited. When I showed my children what I had learned they were so proud,” she said. Zivuseni — “uplift yourself” in Zulu — is an ambitious project to alleviate poverty and renovate community facilities. The sting in the tail, though, is that it employs people for only three months.
“There are thousands of people who are unskilled, unemployed and dependent on social grants,” said Zivu- seni programme manager Stephen Ntsandeni . “That is why this is such a short-term intervention —we need to employ as many people as possible and cast the poverty alleviation net over a wider distance. When the beneficiaries exit the programme our hope is that their confidence levels would have been boosted so that they can try and get something else.”
Launched last year by Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa, the project is a five-year initiative that aims to employ 100 000 people. The provincial government committed R420-million to the project — R70-million was spent last year, R150-million is budgeted for this year and R200-million for next year.
Beneficiaries like Gaanbi receive a R40 a day. While the going rate for labour in Gauteng is R60 a day, and Zivuseni beneficiaries are therefore being paid below the market rate, this doesn’t matter to people who have never been employed.
Tommy Modise, the site foreman at Levesche Primary School in Soweto, which Zivuseni is renovating, said, “This work has transformed my life … We even put that blackboard up.” A green chalkboard with a South African flag drawn across it hangs on a far wall.
Zivuseni is in partnership with local government, the departments of health, education and labour, and the Independent Development Trust. It targets community facilities including schools, clinics and hospitals for repair. The project prioritises the recruitment of women who head single households.
“Once we have recruited people we put them on a database. For each new project a new group of workers is randomly selected,” said Ntsandeni. “If a project is in an area where we didn’t recruit from last year, we then register people there.” There are now 120 000 people registered on the database. “Obviously they won’t all get an opportunity to work,” said Ntsandeni. Opportunists are using Zivuseni as a front to cash in.
But these are minor hiccups for a project that is a harbinger for the launch of the Expanded Public Works Project, which aims to create one million job opportunities in the next five years.