“This paper addresses the issues of social protection, citizenship and the employment relationship through the lens of South Africa. All ideologies of welfare have at their heart assumptions both about the nature of the relationship between the state and citizens, and about the role of employment in contributing to lifelong security for workers and their families. A central argument of this paper is that we should not now substitute the state as the sole allocative and distributive mechanism in the place of the market. The paper will argue that employers and owners of capital should be held responsible for contributing to social benefits and that the current popularity of cash transfers as a social policy intervention unwittingly detracts from this additional policy focus.”
