Introduction:

Our contribution to this Festschrift is an exploration of Hans-Jörg Herr's enduring interest in development policy and practice. In our research for the GDED on job creation, we first interviewed face-to-face over 3 000 workers in the hospitality, private security and agricultural sectors in Gauteng. We then examined various labour-intensive job creation schemes, including the Community Work Programme. In the first part of the article we present the results of our research on the CWP. Although participants felt that the scheme contributed to greater social cohesion in the community, the jobs were low-paid and part-time, and the project did not facilitate the creation of sustainable jobs. In the second part of the article we argue that the state has transferred its responsibility for care work to women in poor households. We conclude that, while a "quiet revolution" is taking place in development policies in the Global South, cash transfers do little to tackle the structure of inequality. Ferguson is right to identify spaces within neo-liberal capitalism where the poor are able to benefit from social grants; but to be sustainable "the politics of distribution" will need to link cash transfers to an alternative, job-creating developmental path.