David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels
A massive drive to address the endemic poverty, chronic unemployment, dire skills shortage and shockingly poor education levels in South Africa received an urgent kickstart from the education and labour ministries last week.
The government has taken almost seven years to come up with its integrated human resources development strategy. But experts say it will take about 20 years for this strategy to bear fruit, given the country’s dismal realities of nearly 40% unemployment; 50% adult illiteracy (and 20% with no schooling at all); and 250000 students yearly ignored by the labour market because they fail to pass matric, even though they’ve passed 11 years of schooling.
Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said the strategy aims to “overcome the disaster of millions of our people being left hanging and subsequently being trapped in poverty”.
Also at the launch Minister of Education Kader Asmal said “the intentional deskilling of our people” over decades of apartheid has created the uniqueness of the human resource crisis the country faces.
The strategy targets the foundations for human development and the supply of high-level and scarce skills, employer participation in lifelong learning and employment growth.
According to the government’s strategy document, A Nation at Work for a Better Life for All, South Africa has been seriously affected by the globalised economy and the mobility of skills. Official research shows that 82 811 professional people emigrated between 1989 and 1997, but independent research places the figure at a hefty 233 609.
Some skills are so urgently needed that foreign skills must be imported, said Mdladlana, and “all the legal impediments to this happening must be resolved by August at the latest”.
Importing skills is all very well, says the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) Neva Makgetla, but African graduates in the country are not getting jobs. “This is clearly related to race.”
She says maths, science and culture need a heavier emphasis in African secondary schools. “This is critical, but the Department of Education seems to have no defined way of doing this.”
Matric must be scrapped as soon as possible, Makgetla says, because “it is useless in our labour market, with no competencies for work seekers”. Cosatu also believes the education budget is inadequate.
Mdladlana said partnerships with the private sector are essential for the success of the human resources strategy but private providers of education and training continue to express dissatisfaction with the way the government is including them.
“The whole process is being held back because of a lack of clear guidelines for accrediting and registering private providers,” says one representative of private education. “This means companies aren’t investing in private providers because they’re not sure if the providers in question will get registered.”
In further education and training, the pre-registration process is only now starting, “so we’re looking at two years down the line for the accreditation and registration process to get done. This will stall the whole resources development strategy.”
Private providers claim they provide the bulk of the country’s vocational skills training and can react to market needs far faster than public institutions, which will “always be playing catch-up”.
The private sector expresses scepticism about the role of Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas), which have to identify areas of skills needs and allocate corresponding grants. There is a fear that Setas will be biased towards public institutions in their allocation of funds because of the perceived Cabinet priority to protect public education.
The government’s capacity to address literacy and adult basic education and training (Abet) areas the strategy earmarks for priority treatment has also been queried.
“The education department’s Abet directorate is understaffed, the labour department has no Abet directorate and very few Setas have appointed Abet project leaders. So who is going to provide the leadership and drive?” asks one Abet expert.