Two weeks ago, Statistics SA (Stats SA) released the latest unemployment figures in our country. The numbers are extremely debilitating. By an expanded definition, 41% of the working-age population is unemployed.
In addition to this, 64.4% of the youth is out of work. Perhaps more depressing is the growing rate of graduate unemployment, which stands at a shocking 20%. To put all this into perspective, seven in every 10 young people in SA are not working.
And for every 10 graduates, two are not working. This might seem like a fairly small number, but when you realise that it has grown exponentially in the past five years, you begin to appreciate what it implies for the future of our country, especially given the effects of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic that will continue to be felt for many years to come by our stagnant economy.
Since the release of the report, I have listened to commentaries from all sectors of the population, with a specific focus on politicians. Many have been speaking about how the youth demographic dividend is now clearly a demographic threat owing to its marginalisation from the economy.
And as usual, the argument about how all SA’s problems are the result of “the triple challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequality” has found great expression. This argument is not wrong. Our challenges are largely structural and can be traced directly to our amoral past, whose vestiges can still be gleaned in our present.
But there is one particular issue that few dare to speak about – a factor just as important as the other three: corruption.
People tend to think of corruption merely as the looting of state coffers. To a great degree, corruption is seen as a victimless crime. The result of such thinking is that the link between corruption and issues such as unemployment and poverty is rarely ever thought about.
But there is a link and it is a very strong one. The state has a responsibility to utilise resources to facilitate development. When those resources are looted, the state cannot do so, and the result is that it cannot attract investment or create a conducive environment for business, which would employ people, to thrive.
The former president of the South African Students Congress, Mbulelo Mandlana, argues profoundly that: “Corruption weakens the state that is supposed to lead a job-creation programme. When there is no job creation, there is no income for people. When there is no income, there is poverty.”
And when there is poverty, there is no access to instruments such as higher education or capital for entrepreneurial ventures, which means there is no upward mobility that would undermine the conditions that give rise to structural inequality.
South Africans need to realise that every time they defend a black politician charged with corruption, as so often happens, they are making a decision that has material consequences for their own lives and for the future of our country.
Every time they excuse corruption, they give justification for the existence of the shocking levels of unemployment in our country. I have written many times in this column about the dangers of young people fighting the battles of ANC politicians charged with corruption and have argued that we must hold black leaders to a higher moral standard than we do anyone else.
Stats SA's report is precisely why I am passionate about this issue. Corruption is not a victimless crime. The victims of corruption are black people – particularly the black youth that comprise a disproportionately greater percentage of the unemployed. People need to realise that corruption is very costly!
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