It has become routine for South Africans to lament our ever-escalating unemployment rates quarterly. Last week Stats SA announced conservative unemployment figure of 35.3% for the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 34.9% in the previous quarter. We are no longer shocked.
Every quarter, Stats SA releases unemployment figures that confirm our painfully obvious reality of mass unemployment. Without skipping a beat, we bemoan the government's inaction and are at pains to point out the knock-on effect of unemployment such as frustration, crime, mental illness and social unrest. Soon, we move on to the next big headline: high murder rates, anti-immigrant riots, electricity blackouts or any of the social and political crises that are a permanent feature our democratic SA.
More alarming is that the unemployment rate continues to increase even as the economy grew by 4.9% in 2021. So deep is our crisis that even when we take a step forward, we are taking several steps back.
What about our society has numbed us to the jobs disaster? Why are these figures not enough to startle us into catalytic action to change course? We remain a society which, in a context of mass unemployment, has seen many in government, the private sector and non-governmental organisations reject proposed interventions that increase social protection, even as some of our most radical employment creation interventions remain internship programmes and entrepreneurship funding programmes that feed into the current economic zeitgeist rather than changing it.
In a discussion hosted by the Rivonia Circle in Mahikeng about the most pressing social and economic issues facing the North West today, Shellie Moletsane, a young community activist asked a question that fundamentally challenges our understanding of how we should approach the issue of unemployment in SA. Presented with a range of issues unemployment unsurprisingly ranked as one of the highest priority issues for people in Mahikeng. Moletsane asked members of her community to consider whether unemployment ranked higher than other social and economic ills simply because it was the most obvious problem rather than the root cause. Her provocation was for us all to consider that perhaps to solve unemployment we need to address social and political issues as the cause and unemployment as a symptom.
Maybe we are investing our efforts and resources on unemployment when in fact issues related to the decay of politics, unacceptable inequalities, the erosion of family structures and our lack of shared values and social order, which, if left unattended, contribute to a breakdown in society, may be the key to turning the tide on unemployment. In 2018, the National Planning Commission released a position paper titled ‘Youth labour market transitions’, which argues that some of the greatest barriers to youth employment are not related to youth readiness for the world of work. It contends that while issues such as education, experience and entrepreneurship funding are prohibitive to youth economic participation, young people also cite sociocultural and structural barriers that have got more to do with how our society is structured than the competence of youth.
Youth cite the high cost of job-seeking, which includes transport costs, high data cost and demands for them to present themselves in clothes they cannot afford. Youth explain how workplace cultures are alienating to them, expecting perfect English or Afrikaans, and behaviours that align with a Eurocentric corporate culture no-one prepares them for.
Economically, marginalised youth also talk about the bruising and unseen psychosocial effect of generational poverty – what it feels like to live in a home where no-one has worked in their lifetime. Where no-one they were raised by has workplace networks to share or can prepare them for demands of the workplace because they too have not got the requisite experiences. They talk about the effect of consistent rejection by potential employers or the scare of failure when they get opportunities that they cannot make the most of because they could not get to work on time, contending with water and electricity issues or dealing with a parent too sick to care for themselves.
It is perhaps time for us to rethink the structural reasons for unemployment. Perhaps we need less internships programmes and more infrastructure programmes. Less job readiness that focuses on the unemployed and more business readiness that focuses on ensuring employers are contextually ready for this workforce and its challenges. Less investment in financial capital and more investment in developing human capital. Because, ultimately, a strong economy is the product of a functional society and the greatest asset in any society is its people. Investing in people’s wellbeing is a necessary step towards a more peaceful and prosperous SA.
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