CAPE ARGUS

AS we stand at the moment in South Africa, we still have the worlds worst unemployment problem.  Expanded definition of unemploy- ment takes us beyond 40% and in some instances the youth are over 70% unemployment.  It is not sustainable and it is a miracle that our people have not taken radical action against the system.  When unemployment reached half of these proportions in North Africa many years ago, we saw the outbreak of the “Arab spring”. 

This spread to Egypt and almost crippled the Egyptian economy which was at that stage probably the second largest in Africa.  We saw signs of this a few years back in KwaZulu Natal which started to spread to Gauteng. 

We must stop this and we have seen how the Government of National Unity has agreed that unemployment is our biggest problem in South Africa.  In essence we need to analyse what is causing the unemployment and how do we start tackling it both from the bottom up and the top down.  In my daily interactions with small businesses, I constantly hear their refrain about the difficulties in running their businesses. 

In my interactions with the Par-

LOVE THY LABOUR MICHAEL BAGRAIM EVERYTHING AFFECTS JOB CREATION

Pliamentary Portfolio Committee of Employment and Labour, I hear from top down as to how the system is creating problems for small and big businesses.  We read analysis from experts at the University of Cape Town who have identified factors hindering employment.  It will not take a commission of enquiry, with respect to our President, to put all these factors together to start the hard road to changing the system of the harsh regulatory authority hin- dering job creation.  Firstly, we must all understand and internalise that government is not the best vehicle to create jobs.

It is the best vehicle to create a successful environment to enable small businesses and in some cases large businesses to create those desperately needed jobs.  Secondly, we must also internalise the fact that jobs are not altruistically created. They are created to in turn create a profit for the business that employs them.

If there is no profit from a particu- lar job or if it is not functional for the business to enable it to create profit, then that job is redundant and super- fluous to the organisation.  The superfluous job will be off loaded as soon as possible, as we have seen with the myriad of retrenchments taking place across the country. 

As a labour lawyer I get involved in the retrenchment programmes with dozens of businesses.  They all tell me if the job is not functional or profitable then it must be expunged as soon as legally possible. 

Thirdly, we are well into the Fourth Industrial Revolution and certainly
Thursday, February 20 2025 5 being already affected by artificial intelligence.
These two factors mean that many jobs that you and I know about will not be available or in existence in ten years time.

Already the business community is gearing itself up for automation, industrialisation, computerisation and outsourcing to other jurisdictions who are already part of the artificial intelli- gence generation.
We are going to have to rely very heavily on the youth of our country who hopefully will receive primary and secondary education in this STEM Subjects.

We have heard from the Minister of Education, Siviwe Gwarube, that the school system has to gear itself up towards maths and science and indeed computer science.
The long term goal of our basic education is to have a workforce geared for the workplace coming out of the school system.

However, we can’t wait for that as we have literally over ten million people in South Africa today who are ready for jobs, need jobs and can’t find jobs.
Bagraim is a veteran labour lawyer and Democratic Alliance MP.