ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an innovation to South Africa's social protection system, the Community Work Programme (CWP) which is modelled on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The CWP is the latest in a number of changes to South African social development policy since the transition from apartheid to democracy, and its intent is to straddle the divide between social and economic policy. The CWP, a pilot employment guarantee scheme, was initiated by the Second Economy Strategy Project, an initiative of the Presidency located in the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), which is a policy research non-governmental organization (NGO). In 2007, a pilot programme to test the approach was implemented under the auspices of a partnership between the Presidency and the Department for Social Development. Accordingly, the decision was taken to locate CWP within the Department of Co-operative Governance (DCoG) from 1 April 2010.
