ABSTRACT

Based on interviews and conversations spanning two decades (1998–2018), this chapter considers the impact of the Joint Enrichment Project (JEP) on its former staff. It discusses the mechanisms that made it an incubator for staff agency and ultimately a launching pad for staff. While JEP helped launch its staff into middle-class lives, their trajectories—like those of former JEP participants—reflect a larger pattern of inequitable socio-economic reproduction, where economic opportunities are largely tied to educational background. The same general analytical categories used in Chapters 3 and 6 (time, material circumstances, and voice) are employed here, providing a nuanced illustration of changes in staff's lives and self-identities over time. The chapter considers former staff's stances toward faith and religion, and their perspective on their children's future, including some tensions and ambivalence about their changing social-economic status. It concludes with a brief discussion of JEP as a platform from which JEP's directors extended their influence on South Africa's socio-economic landscape. The perspectives highlighted in this chapter do not represent all staff who passed through JEP, just as the people in Chapters 3–6 do not represent all JEP's youth participants. However, collectively—and in comparison with the participants' experiences—their life trajectories and perspectives shed light on JEP's impact and provide a glimpse into both rapid socio-economic change and persistent socio-economic reproduction in post-apartheid South Africa.