A group of unemployed graduates have joined about 500 unionists who have descended in parliament just before finance minister Tito Mboweni tabled his national Budget Speech.

The chairperson of the unemployed graduate movement, Nkululeko Ndlovu, said they are in solidarity with the Assembly of the Unemployed. “We have submitted a memorandum and we demand an academy of agriculture in South Africa. If there is any, we want to know where it is because unemployment rate is very high in our country. The government should invest more money on unemployed graduates, especially those who want to become researchers,” Ndlovu said.

The memorandum read: “We refuse to be silenced, to be made invisible. To the 11 million unemployed we say join the Assembly of the Unemployed, add your voice to the cry of the excluded. Poverty in South Africa is a brutal, daily reality for us. Thirty million of us live below the poverty level of R1,200 per month. Many of us from the ages of 18 to 59 are without any form of income. We can work and we are told we have to work if we want to survive but there is no work for us.”

The group said their real jobs summit met on the eve of the 2020/21 announcement of the national budget and analysed the multiple crises facing the country. “We are convinced that the economic and social crises currently being experienced in our country place our society at the point of no return,” they said.