rural livelihoods

Over three quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas. They often lack economic opportunities, have difficulty accessing basic services, have limited voice in governance and remain extremely vulnerable to shocks.

How can development practice and approaches address these issues within the current financial constraints facing national budgets and donor funding? What are the new, innovative - and more cost effective - solutions and applications available to respond to rural development challenges in Africa and other parts of the developing world in a meaningful manner?

The 7th Annual SANGONeT "ICTs for Civil Society" Conference, to be held from 1-3 November 2011 at the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg, will focus on information communication technologies for rural development (ICT4RD) under the theme “Rural Realities, Real Solutions”.

ICT4RD 2011 posits that part of the answer to the questions listed above will rely on new technologies - technologies like mobile phones - with coverage already reaching further than roads, electricity, sanitation and clean water.

ICT4RD 2011 is the first African conference to apply these emerging technologies and practices to rural development, and will provide new thought leadership at a moment in time when the development sector is poised for innovation and change.

ICT4RD 2011 will bring together 250-300 experts and practitioners - from government, NGOs, donor community, ICT sector, social entrepreneurs, investors and other stakeholder groups - from across Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, to confront the realities of rural development and explore the innovative use of ICTs to catalyze the growth of ICT4RD solutions for scale.

For more about ICT4RD 2011 and to register, refer to www.ngopulse.org/ict4rd.

Follow updates about the event on Facebook, or Twitter, or by replying to ict4rd@ngopulse.org.

SANGONeT Conference Team
August 2011

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There's Not an App for That

The most important, single issue facing government today is improving conditions for greater labour absorption.

The South African Bill of Rights says, “Every citizen has the right to choose their trade, occupation or profession freely.” But local laws and institutions do not fully support that right, and one consequence is our staggering unemployment rate.

The results of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), recently published by Statistics South Africa, revealed some alarming labour market trends. According to the strict definition, the unemployment rate increased from 24.3 percent (4.165 million) in the last quarter of 2009 to 25.2 percent (4.310 million) in the first three months of 2010 – a loss of 145 000 jobs. When the first quarter of 2010 is compared to that of 2009, if we include discouraged work seekers who have given up searching for work because they believe there is none available, the unemployment rate increases from 28.4 percent (5.4 million) to 32.4 percent (6.1 million) unemployed people.

This paints a very bleak picture indeed.

To make matters worse, these employment figures are at odds with the growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) – 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to 1.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2009. And, according to the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), gross labour earnings paid to employees in the formal non-agricultural sector in the first quarter of 2010, was 11.7 percent more than in the first quarter of 2009. Therefore, on average, for those with jobs in South Africa, things got a whole lot better despite almost a million losing theirs in 2009.

A further worrying concern is that, of the unemployed, 63.5 percent have been out of a job for longer than a year, and the majority are young with limited education and other skills. If the low end of the labour market were allowed to function unhindered, young and unskilled people would not have such a desperate struggle to get onto the first rung of the employment ladder. Without doubt, the already employed will protest that any weakening of job-security legislation or erosion of minimum wages will lead to increased poverty. Studies have shown that unemployment is a significant driver of poverty, so how can we close our eyes to it.

Often ignored is that worker productivity is the main determinant of what employers are willing to pay, and a legislated increase in the price of labour does not increase worker productivity. According to fundamental economic logic, if a minimum wage of R2 000 per month can improve conditions for workers, then one of R20 000 per month should improve conditions even more. But, obviously, a minimum of R20 000 would render more people unemployable. People who do not get jobs as a result of such legislation are unseen victims while those who can clearly be seen to lose jobs are only too visible.

Claire Bisseker states in an article (Financial Mail, 25 June 2010) that, “There are 387 manufacturers that have refused despite an exhaustive legal process by the clothing industry national bargaining council, to honour minimum wages and conditions of employment.” She reveals that a total of 43 percent of clothing manufacturers in the country are not complying with minimum wage legislation. The clothing industry national bargaining council is currently sitting on execution orders against the first 70 firms that have failed to meet their regulatory obligations, which, if carried out, could result in about 4 000 workers losing their jobs. I know that if I were one of these 4 000 individuals facing unemployment, I would certainly be against the carrying out of the execution orders.

Bisseker sums up the situation succinctly, “The standoff in the clothing industry forces a choice to be made between upholding decent working standards and making thousands of people redundant in the middle of winter”. So, at the heart of the matter is the African National Congress’ policy of ‘the creation of decent work’. The small firms that ‘refuse to honour minimum wages and conditions of employment’ do not do so out of pure cussedness or because they are mean but because they cannot afford to pay the higher costs. But, who gets to decide what is ‘decent work’? Despite all statistics, if you were the one unemployed, so that, as far as you are concerned, the rate of unemployment is 100 percent, surely you would want to have the right to decide for yourself what constitutes ‘decent work’.

Employees do not happily work under trying conditions for extremely low wages because they prefer such jobs to better paying and more attractive ones. They take such jobs because, at the time, it is their only chance to earn the money they need to support their families. Their choice is often between a poorly paid, unpleasant job, and starvation for their families and themselves.

A significant and laudable factor that emerges from Bissiker’s article is that it was the South Africa Clothing and Allied Workers’ Union (SACTWU) that asked for the writs of execution to be delayed to “explore further avenues”. The spokesperson for the Apparel Manufacturers of South Africa (AMSA) was more uncompromising. According to Ms Bissiker he said that, “they don’t want to shut companies down either but neither can the status quo be allowed to continue, simply to save jobs”.  Do AMSA and SACTWU truly believe that the workers will be better off unemployed than in jobs that, in their view, are not “decent”? Will they support the families of the unemployed workers who lose their jobs because of these actions? Self-interest is usually buried in such strange logic.

Other manufacturers will benefit if the 387 firms can be knocked out of the competition, but the self-interest of the labour union seems more obscure. Is it in the interests of SACTWU members for their union to be a party to making first 4,000 and later even more workers unemployed? Labour unions are supposed to look after the interests of their members, a task they perform with vigour. It is not their responsibility to solve the country’s socio-economic problems. That is the task of government.

The most important, single issue facing government today is improving conditions for greater labour absorption. For government to achieve its stated objective of reducing unemployment and stimulating growth, it has to urgently address labour market policies and laws that exacerbate unemployment, such as those that abridge the constitutional and human rights of garment manufacturing workers, and threaten to imminently make thousands of them unemployed.

- Jasson Urbach is an economist at the Free Market Foundation. This article first appeared in the Tshikululu Social Investments’ (TSI) Thought Leadership. It is republished here with the permission of TSI.

South Africa consists of people who live out their culture in different or in similar ways. Culture includes all the various languages which people speak as their mother tongue and as a second or even a third language. It also includes the music, literature, visual arts, dance, drama, oral traditions, traditional practices which include food, fashion, architecture and heritage and the particular beliefs of a cultural group which all contribute to a unique way of life that is in certain ways distinct from that of another cultural group. All of these distinct cultural characteristics in some way or another contribute to a diverse, but also a shared and vibrant cultural landscape in South Africa.

However, the cultural landscape of South Africa on the one hand tells a story of underdevelopment, neglect and blatant disregard of certain cultures and on the other hand a story of preferential treatment of particular cultural communities and cultural practices. Hence, the challenge is to create enabling and creative cultural pathways to rectify these imbalances and to reshape the cultural landscape of the South Africa in order to reflect the rich diversity and set in motion supportive collaboration between the various cultural groups.

Cultural pathways refer to all the projects which are aimed at preserving, promoting and developing a specific culture. It may include anything that relates to culture such as a language, dance, literature, music, creative writing, crafts, visual arts, traditional fashion or food, heritage or a particular indigenous cultural project.

These cultural projects are carried out by various cultural agencies such as government departments, schools, universities, individual practitioners, non-governmental organisations, religious entities, cultural groups and councils. In this respect South Africa is privileged to have a wide range of professional cultural agencies that provide highly professional services which are geared at developing professionals for the cultural industry. These agencies are however very expensive and the entrance requirement to do any of the preparation programmes, such as a diploma, degree or certificate is matric with specialisation in an industry-related subject.

The cultural industries include the radio, television, print media, design, electronic media, tourism, heritage, cultural festivals, architecture, fashion, music, drama, education, book, crafts, language practitioners, advertising, agriculture, speech and language therapy, communication and related industries.

South Africa is also very privileged to have a wide range of amateur cultural agencies that do excellent work in terms of preserving, promoting and developing culture. They are committed to the task at hand and engage in extensive cultural mapping to provide the most relevant and best service possible. Cultural mapping involves identifying and documenting all of the local cultural resources, such as writers, poets, musicians, storytellers, dancers, historians, museums, books, galleries, craft industries, distinctive landmarks, local events and other industries, archaeological sites, etc. Comprehensive cultural mapping also enable communities to recognise, celebrate and support their own cultural environment. Such a workable and sustainable cultural environment creates ample opportunities for cultural entrepreneurs who are prepared to take the risk to translate these cultural resources into cultural capital for personal economic gain, but also to bring about local social development. 

Cultural capital refers to the goods and services which generate monetary benefits or other tangible or intangible benefits to cultural entrepreneurs and the communities in which they are active. To this effect indigenous culture has been identified as a potential resource to generate cultural capital and is seen by academics and activists in the field of culture development, as well as UNESCO as an alternative way of promoting development in poor rural communities in many parts of the world.

According to a paper written by Keith Nurse, titled ‘Culture as the Fourth Pillar of Sustainable Development’ the “cultural industries sector is one of the fastest growing sectors of the world economy. Best estimates value the sector at 7 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product and forecast are put at 10 per cent growth per annum (UNCTAD 2004). This growth is accounted for by rapid techno-economic change in products, distribution & marketing (e.g. e-books, iTunes, Amazon.com); the increasing commercialization of intellectual property, particularly copyright; the shift towards a post-industrial economy where personal, recreational and audio-visual services have expanded as a share of the economy; the strong cross-promotional linkages with sectors like tourism (e.g. festival tourism); and the convergence of media, the increasing concentration of large firms and the expansive growth of the digital economy (e.g. the Internet and ecommerce) that allows for easier production, distribution, consumption as well as infringement (e.g. piracy, file swapping) of cultural products, services and intellectual property.”

However, many cultural communities in South Africa lack the vision, confidence, self belief, persistence and expertise to take advantage of this development and establish cultural agencies which are capable of preserving, promoting and developing their indigenous cultures and position it as a central pillar of sustainable development.

In these respect state entities such as the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, the provincial cultural commissions, other state agencies and various cultural organisations can play a much more constructive role in empowering communities to tap into the cultural industries sector and to create wealth for themselves. Their role is to create an enabling framework and promote networking so that communities engage with one another.

We need however to guard against the notion that our indigenous languages and culture should only be exploited for commercial gain only, because it serves a broader purpose.

Socially it builds positive self-esteem and identity within communities. Culturally it unblocks the perceptions that indigenous culture is backwards and inspires creativity and originality within communities. Educationally it contextualises learning and teaching and promotes the value of indigenous knowledge. Entrepreneurially it stimulates the establishment of micro-businesses within the cultural festivals, film, video, print and electronic media, leisure software / computer games, TV, radio and internet broadcasting, advertising, architecture, music, publishing, visual arts & crafts, heritage and tourism, folklore, medicinal plants and other related industries.

Our indigenous languages and cultures do provide many meaningful, sustainable and feasible solutions for the many developmental challenges South African communities face.  Let’s be unashamedly proud about it and make it part of the global cultural domain.  Many other indigenous cultures all over the world are already doing it through cutting-edge technology. What are we waiting for?

- Christo van der Rheede is the CEO: Stigting vir Bemagtiging deur Afrikaans