The Centre for Social Sciences Research (CSSR) and the  Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa  (IDCPPA) at the University of Cape Town invite you to join us for a lunchtime seminar on 9 April 2024 at 12:45pm. The seminar will be presented by Winnie Arthur.

About the Seminar:

Work, welfare and poverty policy in crisis: Lessons from the re-engineering of Botswana’s public works program.

The threat posed by COVID-19 in early 2020 prompted the government of Botswana to impose a temporarily severe lockdown and a massive emergency feeding program. International organizations (UNDP, World Bank) sponsored investigations that proposed the introduction of new and permanent social cash transfer programs. But the reform that preoccupied the government of Botswana was that of the existing Ipelegeng workfare program that was central to the country's system of social protection. Rather than expand it, however, the government began to implement plans to restructure it in a way that would convert a poverty relief program into a developmental, skill-building program, reducing, dramatically, the number of beneficiaries. This paper examines the background to this reform, its meaning in terms of Botswana's overall social protection system, and the initial experience with the implementation of the reform. It concludes that this restructuring resulted from the long-standing criticism among elite policymakers that the program • was insufficiently developmental in that it failed to develop either skills or a work ethic. The program thus reinforced the elite's perception of poor Batswana as idle shirkers needing both skills and 'mindset change' so that they can be integrated into productive, waged employment and hence become responsible members of society. The experience of implementing reforms served to reinforce these perceptions.

Speakers

Winnie Arthur is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Cape Town. Her thesis examines the norms and beliefs that shape public opinion on welfare provision in Botswana.

 9 April 2024
 12:45 - 14:00 SAST
  CSSR Seminar Room, 4.29 Robert Leslie Social Science Building, UCT

Hosted by the Centre for Social Science Research and the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa