Craft enterprise development: Surviving, responding to, and transforming a South African government poverty alleviation programme

Despite the post-1994 South African state's efforts to support poverty alleviation through arts and culture programmes, government-funded craft enterprises have had a poor rate of success. Based on two case study projects within Phumani Paper, a South African papermaking poverty-alleviation programme, this article argues that craft enterprises can provide an enabling environment for sustainability and resilience in periods of social transition and transformation. However, if the funding and design of such programmes are managed badly, these can undermine the very benefits they are designed to achieve, with negative impacts on poor communities.

Poverty alleviation grants were initially designed as mechanisms for reparations. But the experience described here suggests that government funders neither took cognizance of the values of sustainable development, nor supported what Appadurai describes as 'deep development' (2004). This article demonstrates how Phumani Paper played a valuable role in supporting the imagination, voice and agency of participants, thereby building human capacity and social capital towards a more just and hopeful future without poverty.