What if the future of work in SA was not framed as job creation? Sociologists have long argued that work as a concept is distinct from waged labour. While work is, simply put, the ability and opportunity for people to put in specific efforts over a certain time for a reward, waged labour or a job necessitates a formal, routine and contracted selling of one’s efforts for a price determined by markets rather than by people.

The idea of a job conjures up ideas of needing to work outside the home, wear certain types of clothing, have narrow titles and report to a person society deems to be more important than you. It is attached to status, stability and full compliance with the economic status quo, most often capitalistic, that has become the normalised albeit imperfect site of accepted productive activities...