PAUL MASHATILE | Courageous strategy needed for youth unemployment

Unemployment, especially among SA’s youth, is an albatross around our economy's neck and prospects for national development. Lack of jobs and opportunities also create a sense of hopelessness for the future and is a driver of crime and violence.

While the ANC-led government has made a difference in the lives of our people by delivering the most basic services, even when the country had its highest GDP growth in the mid-2000s, it could not turn this growth into sustained job creation nor significantly decrease unemployment.

Since then, the jobless rate and our inability to create new work has worsened, with SA reaching an all-time high of 35.3% in the last quarter of 2021. This number has improved marginally to 32.9% for the third quarter of this year.

The youth continue to bear the brunt of unemployment as the jobless rate among our county’s youngsters is much higher than the national average. The latest figure from Stats SA shows that the jobless rate is 45.5% for those aged between 15 and 34 years.

This is even higher than the overall expanded definition of unemployment for the country, which takes into consideration discouraged work seekers and is now at 43.1%. SA continues to rank among the highest in the world on youth unemployment. There is no denying that we are letting down young citizens, who account for more than a third of our population.

This situation is a powder keg waiting to explode. There are numerous reasons for this crisis, ranging from an education system that does not give youngsters the right skills for our job market, to the country’s focus on capital-intensive projects that do not generate enough work for unskilled youth.

Structural unemployment remains one of apartheid's enduring legacies; our failure to confront it means we will continue to miss out on the youth dividend. While there is no silver bullet that will remedy this situation, what we can and must do is start implementing our policies and initiatives with greater haste to secure the future generations of our country.

The private sector is a critical role player in helping to create jobs, and while we have seen more partnerships between the government and business in youth development, these must be scaled up. The Covid-19 pandemic and how we had to change the way learners and students were educated serves as a solid example of the benefits of public/private partnerships.

Not only did telecom companies partner with the state to make online learning possible on a scale we have never seen before, they continue to help make a difference. They supply schools with the tools and know-how to help get learners ready for the 21st century world of work that not only involves ICT such as robotics, but also how to adopt education programmes that make online learning comprehensible and fun.

It’s a modernisation of the classroom that must eventually be adopted throughout our education system, especially for rural and township schools. However, it does not end here. Business has the capacity to create more internships not only for those who come from tertiary backgrounds, but also for youth who have not had the advantage of completing their schooling. One way to accomplish this is for the state to change the regulatory environment and support system for entrepreneurs and start-ups run by young people, while business invests in these initiatives.

While entrepreneurship and innovation have been identified as key to addressing youth unemployment, the ANC, in its policy documents, attributes the overall slow pace of progress to policy failures and inadequate implementation of some of its policy resolutions by various government departments, as well as the basic education, higher education and college sectors.

We have also noted the decline in state and private sector funding in some critical areas of focus, a sad fact reflected in our education, health, science and technology document, which will be discussed at the ANC’s national conference this month.

As we forge ahead to ensure a better future for our youth, we should not pay lip service to youth unemployment, but listen to what young South Africans are saying.

At the recent national presidential summit on SMMEs and cooperatives, National Youth Development Agency CEO Waseem Carrim called on the country to adopt a different outlook on entrepreneurship to encourage young people to start businesses.

He warned that the current view on entrepreneurship was restrictive and did not encourage the youth to opt for entrepreneurship, as the idea was often sold as a fallback upon not being able to find a job. The country should stop selling the idea of becoming an entrepreneur as having to measure up to global billionaires like Elon Musk, he cautioned.

The warning is entirely appropriate. Entrepreneurship can and does lead to great financial success on occasion, particularly if the stars align for a particular individual entrepreneur. But "billionaire" and "entrepreneur" are not interchangeable, and many people do start businesses purely for the purpose of creating employment for themselves. Even businesses that never grow to employ thousands make a positive contribution to reducing unemployment.

Undoubtedly, there is no single panacea to youth unemployment, but that does not mean its unsolvable either. We need to find the resilience, innovation, clarity of thought and strength of character that helped us triumph over apartheid and oppression. The poverty and underdevelopment of young people are no less serious a challenge.

• Mashatile is treasurer-general of the ANC