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Unemployment among young South Africans rose significantly over the past six years and a lot of companies are busy retrenching employees due to financial instability which means the situation is likely to be worse than it is today.
“The unemployment rate among youth aged 15 to 34 increased from 32.7% to 36.1% between 2008 and 2014," according to the latest Stats SA report on national and provincial labour market trends among the youth.
This report also revealed that ‘Since the 2008 recession, the youth unemployment rate has been consistently higher than that of adults, by more than 20 percentage points. While young adults made up between 52% to 64% of the working population, they accounted for only 42% to 49% of the employed’.
I know this is not only the responsibility of our government to create jobs for the youth and I am also fully aware of the challenges that our government may face, such as Youth being unemployable, incompetence, uneducated, etc. However, it is absolutely wrong and I repeat it is absolutely wrong for the government to promise the Youth ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ during elections time and turn its back after securing votes from the same youth who voted them in power. How do you really promise someone something that you are cannot fulfil.
On the other side, the number of graduates from institutions of higher learning has increased. There are graduates who completed their diplomas and degrees before 2008 and even today they are still looking for a job. Some are even looking for an internship but due to age restrictions they are no longer qualified. We have also noticed that a lot of Bachelor of Science graduates end up enrolling for a one year course on methodology in Bachelor of Education so they can be endorsed to become educators. Most of them are taking that route not because they have passion in education sector but because of circumstances, one being high Unemployment in South Africa. So the next thing we cry and say learners of today are not taking education seriously, how can they continuously underperform from term to term, but we forget to analyse the root cause of the problem, who is teaching them, do they like what they are doing?
Come elections, you will hear these political leaders saying “Comrades and compatriots, we, as South African government we will ensure that we build over a million jobs for our Youth in a 12 month period” We will make sure that all graduates of South Africa and Youth in particular are treated with respect and dignity to ensure they get internships and learnerships” My question is where is that respect and dignity? We are those jobs? Or do they exist somewhere in another planet that we don’t know. No no, come on leaders, you are misdirecting our beloved country. The Youth of South Africa are becoming impatient with promises that are never fulfilled. Some of the Youth I am talking about are bread winners in the families and everyone in the family is looking up to them. But how do you put bread on the table if you can’t even get a stipend of R2500 per month. This may sound like a joke to those who have never seen poverty. If you only read about it, just know we see it every second. It exists.
My call to South African government is that it is bout time for action. Enough promises have been made. Create jobs for our Youth, the future of this country. We cannot be seen walking in the streets everyday with our degrees, honours, and diplomas whereas we have government that says “We care about the Youth of this country, unless the word “care” has lost its meaning. And if so, then they need to avoid using it as it misleads the youth of this country.
