How can we promise guaranteed work?
We are busily transforming our back-of-the-envelope workings below into a fully costed and funded plan that will cover in detail how much the guarantee programme will cost, how it will be funded, administered, implemented, monitored, evaluated and iterated. We will release our plan and model for public scrutiny once it is complete.
What does guaranteed work mean for an unemployed South African?
- You can choose from different half-time jobs (two and a half days a week) paying R2,200 per month or part-time, if you prefer, paying R26 per hour (up to two and half days a week).
- The jobs will be near where you live - jobs that are useful to you and your community.
- Jobs would be, for example, installing renewable energy (e.g. solar water heaters, solar mini grids and wind turbines), construction (e.g. improving schools, ECD centres, public spaces, roads, community buildings, clinics, schools), working as staff in early childhood development centres, schools and community policing.
- You will also be able to choose instead to try to be an entrepreneur or informal trader. You will be paid R2,200 per month during the training period. Once you start trading, you will be paid in the form of cash and stock to sell, and/or equipment to improve or make things.
Cost, funding, administering
We estimate that we will be able to cover around 30% of the cost from re-prioritisation of the national budget, getting better value on current allocations, a higher income tax on top earners and a higher VAT rate on luxury goods.
The other 70% will need to be paid for from a fiscal stimulus averaging 3% of GDP annually over four years. Spent on infrastructure projects, it will grow our GDP up to 4 times more than the amount spent. So, the increase in borrowing in the short term will lead to a decrease in debt to GDP in the medium term.
Progress Updates
Progress Party's first by-elections
Tue 20 July 2023
The party got its first experience of contesting elections in two heated ward contests.
Thaba Nchu branch launched
Tue 4 July 2023
Kagiso Neo Pula and her team launched a Progress Party branch in Selosesha library to help unemployed people in Thaba Nchu.
First two candidates for 19 July by-elections
Mon 26 June 2023
We are contesting wards 7 (Freedom Square) and 49 (Thaba Nchu) in Mangaung. Candidates are respectively: Aphiwe Mzilikazi, a 24-year-old musical social entrepreneur and Kagiso Pula, a 29-year-old mom who wants her daughter to live in a country filled with opportunity for all.
Registration is approved
Wed 14 June 2023
We received our registration approval letter from the IEC.
Registration submission with the IEC
Fri 19 May 2023
Our registration papers were submitted today. We are hopeful of completing the process by the end of June. In the meantime though, we are not standing still. We are launching branches, cultivating leaders, and building a meaningful, active and dynamic home for all who share our values.
Party leadership until our first full members' assembly
Fri 28 April 2023
We will hold a full members' assembly in early 2024 to vote in our leadership. Until then, Progress is being centrally coordinated by an advisory council.
Reached over 1,000 registered-voter signatures
Fri 21 April 2023
It took 5 branch relaunches over a month in March and April, but we got 1,500 signatures in support of forming Progress Party. Of those, 1,086 were registered to vote so we surpassed the threshold of 1,000 to register Progress at the national level with the IEC.
Press
DAILY MAVERICK: Nine million people out of work for more than a year — whither unemployment in South Africa?
By Ayal Belling, 15 November 2023
DAILY MAVERICK: Hundreds of thousands of jobs likely to disappear with Godongwana’s public employment budget cuts
By Ayal Belling, 6 November 2023
DAILY MAVERICK: A job opportunity for every South African – the promise of a new party formed by unemployed people
By Ayal Belling, 21 June 2023
DAILY MAVERICK: An ‘extraordinary and loving’ activist – who was struggling for dignity in Gugs – has been gunned down
By Pamela Silwana, Ayal Belling and Marina Hall, 24 January 2023
DAILY MAVERICK: The high price of economic bumbling and austerity: 64% of working-age people are without jobs
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 2 December 2021
DAILY MAVERICK: Unemployment for black South Africans is worse today than in 1994
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 12 November 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Local government elections 2021 – a chance to put the ‘public’ back into public institutions
By Pamela Silwana & Ayal Belling (OfW), 28 July 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Unemployment just before lockdown was worst on record and is expected to get much worse
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 24 June 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Crisis sees Cape Town suburbs reach across the great social divide
By Pamela Silwana (OfW), 31 March 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: ‘If I tell my daughter there is no hope, I am killing her’
By Pamela Silwana (OfW), 17 March 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Unemployment scourge: ‘The challenge is macro’ and there is hope
By Ed Stoddard (staff writer), 6 March 2020
WATCH: OfW Gugulethu volunteer, Pamela Silwana, on Unemployment Panel at The Daily Maverick Gathering 2020 at the CTICC
The Gathering, 6 March 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Reply to Ayal Belling: We are revolutionising government’s approach to youth employment
By Saul Musker (the Presidency), 24 February 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: The SONAs of dead and underfunded ideas
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 21 February 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Jobless youth one of Ramaphosa’s main priorities
By Sandisiwe Shoba (staff writer), 14 February 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: South Africa's State of Unemployment Disaster
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 12 February 2020
LISTEN: Radio interview with John Maytham on Afternoon Drive
By Ayal Belling (OfW) on CapeTalk, 11 February 2020
DAILY MAVERICK: Using Barack Obama’s organising model to tackle SA’s unemployment crisis
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 21 January 2020
