Mr. Faldie Esau
Data Analytics Director
Faldie Esau, a Researcher/Bibliographer was associated with U.C.T-SALDRU for the past 21 years. He has a BA and Diploma in Datametrics [UNISA]. He has also acquired skills in areas such as Aids Training, Conflict Management, MS Word, Excel, introduction to Stata, PRA workshop-methodology, Facilitation skills, SuperCross-census manipulation, InMagic DBtext-introduction, First Aid & Safety Basic Conditions of Employment & Minimum Wage Database and Labour Markets
Faldie Esau is the last remaining compiler of the Basic Conditions of Employment & Minimum Wage Database. It was meticulously maintained and extended to incorporate Industrial Council wages between 1975 and 1990 when squads of undergraduate students were trained to manipulate wage data. It also generated a range of comprehensive products on the SA labour market that culminated in the ILO Review of the South African labour market.
Esau assisted Horner in an audit of the regional Department of Labour’s Office titled ‘Department of Labour and its Regional Directorate in the province of the Western Cape, May 1996 for the ILO Country Review. This was utilised to assess the capacity of the Department of Labour to carry out various functions and to develop an adequate labour market information system. See p. 422 to 426 of the ILO Country Review.
From February to May 2000 Esau worked together with Horner in piloting in South Africa a new socio economic security (SES) questionnaire for the ILO. This was administered in some 100 ILO member countries. SALDRU was commissioned by the ILO to administer the personal SES Questionnaire in Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal for the period May to August 2001.
Disability
Esau is currently an executive member of the Institute for the Promotion of Disabled Manpower and has been since 1998. He has also been an executive member of the Work Group Committee of SANEL (South African National Epilepsy League] Western Cape for the past two years. He has been a member of the International Day for the Disabled Committee, a sub-group of the Disability Network in the Western Cape since 1999. He was a panel member for the Ntsika Awards for the Disabled Entrepreneur of the Year-1999. He also participated on the team, which produced the Provincial Strategy Paper on Disability in the province at the Civic Centre, Cape Town, 2000 co-ordinated by the Provincial Department of Health & Welfare.
Esau is currently working on mapping disability in the province and produced a number of Saldru publications and made significant contributions towards the ILO Review, Disabled in South Africa. Cape Town: SALDRU, April 1996, see p.464 etseq in the ILO Country Review.
Skills Training
Esau acted as alternate from December 1992 to Dudley Horner at the WCEDF (Western Cape Economic Development Forum) in plenary committee and on the short-term Job Creation committee and was the joint compiler of the Proceedings of the Skills Workshop. Cape Town: Breakwater Lodge, GSB, 29 October 1993. He contributed towards papers that informed the publication: ‘Towards a national skills development strategy. “Skills for productive citizenship for all”’ released by the Department of Labour in October 2000. Esau was appointed on 8 December 1999 to the Development SGB (Standards Generating Body) within the national structure of SAQA (South African Qualifications Authority) and continues to serve on that body.
Aids/HIV Research
Esau generated a comprehensive bibliography on AIDS/HIV and since 1996 through Saldru has been an annual contributor to Unisa’s Institute for Behavioural Sciences National Aids Database. Esau also assisted Dr A. Bakilana developing the module on Youth & Aids for the Cape Area Survey in designing a quantitative questionnaire and co-authoring Young People’s Social Networks, confidants and issues of reproductive health developed by SALDRU and CSSR in September 2003. He contributed to the DBSA Study on assessing the impact of HIV and AIDS on municipalities in South Africa, 2007.
Household Surveys
Esau has been involved in various ways in surveys which have taken place from time to time, including the PSLSD 1993/94 formatting for Excel tabulation and processing data which appeared in the 1994 publication, S.A. Rich & Poor. Work on the Langeberg Household Survey 1999 involved acquiring relevant maps from StatsSA, identifying relevant enumerator area (EA) boundaries, listing households in selected EAs within the survey area with Matthew Welch and the validation of responses in Groot Brak. Mitchells Plain 2000 involved interviewing and validating households in coloured areas of Mitchells Plain. He was also the principal liaison with Ms Zeenat Ishmail, Assistant Director Surveys at StatsSA [Western Cape] and attended a number of their meetings and workshops.
Poverty
In 1994 Esau was engaged in preparing an extensive directory of South Africans working in the areas of 8 social indicators selected by the Cabinet for the Poverty Monitoring Group in the for the RDP Office of the Presidency. This was presented at a workshop on 5 & 6 May 1995 at the Eskom Conference Centre at Midrand.
Esau also assisted David Clark in the development and application of the questionnaire in Murraysburg and Wallacedene between January-March 1998. A revised version of Clark’s work was later published as, CLARK, D. Perceptions of Development: Some Evidence from the Western Cape. SALDRU Working Paper No. 88. Cape Town: SALDRU, January 2000. He also assisted Dr D. Clark and Prof. M Qizilbash in conducting a further survey on poverty, vulnerability and vagueness at three locations in the Western Cape in April and May.
Regional Development
From 1992 Esau has been actively involved with the Western Cape Economic Development Forum (WCEDF) and its successor the Provincial Development Council (PDC) [since 1996]. His contributions were incorporated in two of the following PDC publications, namely: The Western Cape – A socio-economic profile. Cape Town: PDC, October 1996 and Shaping the Cape. Towards a consensus-based provincial growth and development strategy: A development review. Cape Town: PDC, July 1998. He was a member of the Infrastructure and Economic Specialist Committees of the PDC.
In the period ’96 to mid ’99 Esau was involved in a substantial research project on Public Works in the province of the Western Cape. This endeavour was funded by DfID and was a partnership between SALDRU, IFPRI in Washington and the CSAE at Oxford. Apart from substantial contributions to chapters 1 and 3 of the final report Esau was involve in the initial scoping exercise of the main stakeholders, in defining and selecting the variables for the public works database, in compiling the comparative wage database to facilitate analysis of minimum wages with actual wages paid in 101 public works projects, and interviewing workers to establish their profile by means of a questionnaire, and participating in PRA workshops. The outcome was ADATO, M. et al. From Works to Public Works. The Performance of Labour-Intensive Public Works in Western Cape Province, South Africa. Washington, D.C.: IFPRI, November 1999. At a two-day workshop in November 1999 organised by SALDRU and IFPRI at the Hiddingh Campus of UCT, Esau gave a presentation on wages in public works programmes to an audience of 65 participants, including government, business, labour and NGOs. In July 2002 Esau presented the results of the community-based public works programmes at workshops arranged by the PDC for the Provincial Department of Economic Affairs [branch Transport] at De Hoek Piketberg, Paarl and Worcester.
From May 1999 SALDRU has been involved in a collaborative research project convened by Dr Ailsa Holloway of the Disaster Information Management Project in the Environmental & Geographical Sciences Department at UCT. This was a joint project by DIMP, SALDRU, PDC and the Disaster Management Services of the CMC. The SALDRU sub-contract from DIMP amounted to R245 130 over the period 1May 1999 to 31 December 2000. Esau has been SALDRU’s principal researcher attending all meetings and workshops of the research partners, supervising two UCT students employed to compile the database on floods and fires in the Cape metropole. He has also been involved in the overall design of the data information system. DIMP has put in a substantial application to the Innovation Fund and should this be successful Esau would continue to work in this collaborative project in the future.