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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Towards Carnegie3
Professor Francis Wilson, the founding director of SALDRU,
was appointed as UCT’s Acting Pro-Vice Chancellor,
Poverty and Inequality, with his major task being to launch
the three-year Carnegie3 national research initiative
Strategies to Overcome Structural Poverty and Inequality
in South Africa
. More than 500 delegates attended the
September 2012 launch conference, which was hosted by
UCT and supported by the Carnegie Foundation and the
National Treasury.
The Carnegie3 conference sought to focus attention
on understanding the lived experiences of inequality
and the causes and dimensions of persistent inequality,
and considered policies and actions that are aimed at
significantly reducing inequality and poverty in both
the short and long term. The conference focused less
on describing the problems of poverty and inequality,
and more on practical strategies to overcome them.
The emphasis was on practical strategies to mobilise
the energies of people at all levels of society in creative
and effective ways which address structural poverty
and inequality and shifting power relations. It sought to
provide a platform for serious and deep debate about
difficult policy choices that must be made in tackling
these issues of poverty, inequality and the underlying
facts of massive unemployment.
Appropriately, for a conference that was jointly organised
by UCT and the National Planning Commission,
participants reflected the full spectrum of those involved
in implementing, designing or evaluating the diverse
set of policies that are needed to tackle the social ills of
poverty and inequality. They included senior policy makers,
NGOs, community groups, researchers, participants from
government at national, provincial and local levels, and
representatives of trade unions, faith-based organisations
and the business sector.
A ‘Rough Guide’ draft report providing an overview of
some key themes addressed in over 300 presentations
from researchers representing 19 different institutions, with
particular focus on identifying gaps and areas in need of
further research and sharing effective models, is currently
being circulated to authors and presenters. The final
conference report will be published by the end of 2013.
Emeritus Professor Francis Wilson
Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe speaking at the
Carnegie3 conference hosted by UCT