Progress through guaranteed work opportunities for all

Help us make this a reality in 2024

Through the gathering of signatures for our party registration, we have discovered a high-turnout, ultra-low-cost mobilisation and organising strategy. PROGRESS attracts people through our branches’ ability immediately to improve people's chances of finding work, along with the hope PROGRESS brings for 2024.

Here are the steps to get involved...

Sign up as a new member of PROGRESS.
During the sign up you can choose the type of help you're able to offer (e.g. letting people know about PROGRESS, registering people to vote, recruiting new members, checking job-seeker CVs).
That's it, your nearest branch will be in touch with you very soon.

In the meantime, please check you are registered to vote on the IEC website. If you are not registered, you can very quickly and easily register yourself (entirely online) also on the IEC website.

Founding principles

PROGRESS was founded as a party for jobs - out of the unemployed people's organisation, Organising for Work (founded 2018). However, it is a party that sets out to improve the lives of all who live in South Africa.

We see it as perverse that a country that needs so much improvement, cannot find work for all its people. Through guaranteed work opportunities, our vision is to employ the effort, skill, ingenuity and passion of all South Africans to improve the situation in the country across all spheres of life.

A member induction, Langa branch, 4 Sep 2018

Organising for Work, as an organising arm of PROGRESS, continues its grassroots community organising - organising communities in high unemployment areas to run their own branches that both support the unemployed in their search for work.

Our branches are open to the unemployed of ALL ages, educations, abilities and criminal records and act like free job centres to connect the unemployed directly to employers from where they live (always for free).

Credibility & trust

Gugulethu branch volunteers helping the public, 4 Oct 2019

Our work is, and will always remain, rooted in communities. Our Organising for Work branches exist in public spaces, particularly libraries and are run at near-zero cost. Wherever we open branches, we train local unemployed volunteers to staff them.

When COVID-19 hit, we got behind the city-wide organising effort, Cape Town Together, and our volunteers helped launch many areas' community action networks.

We played the lead role in formalising the partnering of neighbourhoods across the city, starting with Gugulethu and Sea Point. This partnering created a profusion of new CANs from the financially less well off parts of the Cape Town.

A workshop in Langa on making high volume job applications, 15 Nov 2018

What are the 41 million working age (15-64) doing?

In employment	16.3m (40% of working age)
Not in employment	24.4m (60% of working age)
Needing work	20.3m (50% of working age)
Unemployment (expanded)	11.9m (42% of workforce including discouraged)
Youth unemployment (expanded)	2.6m (70% of 15-24s in workforce)

Around the World

Country	Unemployed (strict)	Employed of Ages 15-64
S Africa	33%	40%
Brazil	14%	54%
Belgium	6%	64%
Germany	4%	77%
India	6%	56%
Thailand	1%	72%
Tunisia	16%	44%
World	6%	65%
(World Bank and International Labour Organisation various periods, Stats SA QLFS23Q2)

Organising for Work (OfW)

OfW was founded in 2018 by Ayal Belling in collaboration with Luke Jordan and was incorporated as a nonprofit in May 2019. Keren Ben Zeev joined Belling and Jordan at incorporation as a director of OfW. In September 2020, Pamela Silwana, a volunteer at our Gugulethu branch, replaced Jordan as a director. Ben Zeev served as director until June 2022 when she was replaced by Suzanne Solomons. The board centralises and helps coordinate the branches and advocacy.

Belling and Solomons are serving, and previously Ben Zeev and Jordan have served, pro bono. The movement has been funded from inception until January 2020 by Belling in his personal capacity. Small donations have been received from individuals since and a total of R450,000 has been received from the DG Murray Trust (R350,000) and from Open Society Foundation South Africa (R100,000).

Ayal Belling

Previously worked in finance and tech in London and Cape Town. Studied applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town and real estate investment at Cass Business School in London.

Pamela Silwana

Started as volunteer staff at OfW's Gugulethu branch. She is the admin and founder of the Gugulethu community action network - part of Cape Town Together and is a fellow of a programme at the University of the Western Cape that is studying the response to Covid-19. She has been a peer facilitator at the National Youth Development Agency and Khulisa Social Solutions, has done fieldwork and admin for UCT and University of Stellenbosch. She also does occasional tutoring and childcare work.

Suzanne Solomons

Executive assistant at Inyathelo - The South African Institute for Advancement - which works to sustain and strengthen civil society organisations and grow local philanthropy in support of a vibrant democracy in South Africa. She holds degrees in community development and development studies and has a wealth of experience in supporting diverse types on nonprofits as well as in the field of mental health.