Paper short abstract:

Drawing on qualitative research conducted in two districts in rural Mozambique, this paper explores why workers on public employment programmes prefer conditional cash transfers over unconditional ones, despite protesting against the drudgery involved in the former.

Paper long abstract:

“Rebenta mina” – translated as an armoured truck used to detonate landmines - is a double-sided metaphor coined by workers on the Productive Social Action Programme (PASP) to describe their experience on Mozambique’s only conditional cash transfer programme for able-bodied adults of working age. On the one hand, it describes the drudgery involved in public employment programmes; on the other hand, it alludes to the value of their labour in clearing the road for “development”. Despite the treacherous conditions, workers readily supported the PASP over proposals for unconditional cash transfers. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in two districts in rural Mozambique, this paper unpacks this paradox. It asks: what are the conditions of work on the PASP and how do conditions shape workers’ identities and aspirations? How have workers resisted, coopted or acquiesced to the PASP directives imposed by the local and national state? How has participation in the PASP shaped their expectations of the state and politics of claim making? The paper concludes that the continuing importance given to jobs is not the outcome of false consciousness as some may argue, but of a desire for meaningful livelihoods, autonomy and social recognition. In this sense, the use of the metaphor “Rebenta-mina” is itself a strategy of claim-making, used to shame the state into improving the conditions of work on public employment programmes rather than eliminating them altogether.