Unemployment epidemic: These men, gathered together to wait for the possibility of a piece job, are some of the 34.9% of South Africans who are without work, the highest figure among 82 countries monitored by business news agency Bloomberg. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
The government and other stakeholders must demonstrate that they are moving quickly to arrest South Africa’s unemployment crisis, says Rudi Dicks, who heads up the presidency’s project management office.
“We don’t have time. We have to move with haste. That is why I am hoping the public can see that there is a sense of urgency. There is a sense of commitment. That we are allocating resources, because we don’t have time,” Dicks told the Mail & Guardian on the sidelines of a conference organised by the University of the Witwatersrand’s Centre for Researching Education and Labour.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s project management office coordinates the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, the Presidential Employment Stimulus, as well as Operation Vulindlela — established in 2020 to drive structural reforms and support economic growth.
Crisis
Each intervention was set up to address the country’s jobs crisis, which has saddled South Africa with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. In the first quarter of 2022, the country’s official unemployment rate was 34.5% of the labour force.
Youth unemployment is at the heart of the crisis. Of the country’s 40-million working-age people, more than half (51.6%) are between the ages of 15 and 34. By the end of the first quarter of 2022, 46% of people in this age group remained outside of employment, education and training.
The youth unemployment rate under the expanded definition, which counts those who have given up looking for work, is 75.1%.
Analysts have warned that South Africa’s high levels of unemployment create the conditions for social upheaval, as seen during the wave of unrest that gripped parts of the country last July. An expert panel on the riots noted that the violence “can be viewed in the context of multiple crises” — including high youth unemployment — “and no consistent, continuous plan to address this challenge”.
“Young people are frustrated with government delivery. Young people are frustrated with private sector delivery,” Dicks told the M&G on Wednesday.
“People are frustrated with us not implementing what we have promised. So we have to move with haste and speed … What we need to do is implement the government’s programmes. If we just implement the government’s programmes, I am of the view that it would have a significant impact on young people.”
‘As quickly as possible’
During his address to the conference, Dicks noted that the government has been good at creating policy, but has often failed when it has come to implementation.
This is where an initiative like Operation Vulindlela comes in. Earlier in August, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana outlined the recent progress made on the 26 structural reforms identified by the initiative.
Thus far, Godongwana said, nine reforms have been completed, “while another 11 are progressing well”.
Certain reforms, such as improving Eskom’s energy availability factor and completing digital migration, are not on track, the minister said. However, he added, the establishment of the national energy crisis committee demonstrated that the government is “taking decisive action to get these reforms on track as quickly as possible”.
On Operation Vulindlela and implementing structural reforms, Dicks said: “I think we are doing very well.”
“Faster and more is always better. I am the first to admit that if we could do it faster and with greater speed, it would help … That is the kind of confidence we need to create. It’s not only about confidence, but about fixing network sectors that are inefficient. We want to fix electricity. We want to fix bulk water systems that don’t work,” he added.
“If we are able to do those structural reform programmes, we are able to get confidence going and investment going.”
[/membership]