Cape Town - Four years later, under the leadership of Ramaphosa, unemployment figures have grown, and currently stand at 32.9%.
Despite grand plans for more jobs with which President Cyril Ramaphosa came in – as a businessman with economic prowess making big promises to change the country’s trajectory to one of prosperity – unemployment statistics show things have only become worse.
When former president Jacob Zuma left office early in 2019, the unemployment rate stood at around 27%.
Four years later, under the leadership of Ramaphosa, unemployment figures have grown, and currently stand at 32.9%.
This despite the launch of the Jobs Summit in 2018 where the president brought together government, business, labour and community organisations to advance job creation. He stressed that jobs, especially for the youth, would be a priority.
Meanwhile, in the Statistics South Africa Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the third quarter of 2022, results continue to show that the youth (aged 15-34 years) remain vulnerable in the labour market with an unemployment rate of 45.5%.
This unemployment crisis, coupled with the increasing price of survival, with rising petrol and food prices, saw the public take to the streets as unions embarked on a nationwide “cost of living” strike in August and threatened another “national shutdown” last month.
Fight Inequality Alliance South Africa’s Wafaa Abdurahman, who works with the unemployed across the country, said Ramaphosa was the president chosen by business and they put lots of money behind his campaign.
“Government has implemented ... policies that allow big business to come under the guise of creating jobs. They get all these tax breaks and (jobs) never happen. Things are easier for companies to come in and take out of our country, while we have jobless growth in this country.
“With Covid, billionaires got richer, while many lost their jobs or died. How do you justify that,” asked Abdurahman? “All the talk is just noise.
“I have a young person staying with me who has applied to more than 100 places and not even had a response. If you look at the increase in gender-based violence, it’s an effect.
There is nothing for people; no jobs, their social conditions are going down the tube so what happens next?”
United Domestic Workers of South Africa (Udwosa) founder Pinky Mashiane said: “The leadership of President Ramaphosa hasn’t done anything to arrest unemployment in the domestic work sector. Many domestic workers have lost their jobs since 2020 and they’re still losing jobs.
“The government is doing very little to protect the rights of domestic workers and it doesn’t put any measures in place to prevent job losses.
If the government can reach out to employers and work with us in educating both employers and domestic workers, maybe employers might change how they treat domestic workers.
“We need skills development programmes for domestic workers beyond domestic work.” Labour law expert Michael Bagraim added that small businesses needed to be uncoupled from big business.
“Small business has to be given access to loans and needs relaxed labour regulation. We need to create a tax incentives scheme to encourage small businesses to take on more staff. We also need to ensure that small businesses can’t dismiss someone in the first six months of employment without repercussions.
“The current government under Ramaphosa has let things slide even worse than it was under the previous dispensation.
“Every year we add thousands of matriculants to the unemployment queue. Unfortunately the alliance between the government and the trade union movement has made things a lot worse.
“The bargaining council system has been an incredible negative for job creation. The minimum wage legislation has done exactly the same.”
Cape Times