Facilitator of the talk, Bantu Louw, welcoming the audience members PHOTO: Lucian van Wyk
Stellenbosch University (SU) students and staff came together on Tuesday 30 July, to engage in a panel discussion on the crisis of youth unemployment in South Africa and the possible solutions to this issue.
The talk took place in the VV Hall in the Neelsie student centre in Stellenbosch and consisted of a panel of professionals, including student leader Sifiso Zungu, programme coordinator of the SU Transformation Office, Babalwa Gushu and economist Ryan Johnson.
From left to right: Bantu Louw (facilitator), Babalwa Gushu (panel member), Ryan Johnson (panel member), and Sifiso Zungu (panel member) engaging in the talk PHOTO: Lucian van Wyk
According to facilitator of the talk and an Internalisation Practitioner of SU International, Bantu Louw (29), the aim of the talk was “not to provide clear cut solutions on how we solve youth unemployment, but to say that it takes all of society to collaboratively look and think through what the problems are, how they manifest, and ultimately how we can find key solutions to these problems that will be sustainable and ensure we grow our economy too.”
Some of the issues highlighted in the talk ranged from the impact of capitalism on employment, the hardships South Africa has with transforming its economy as well as the faults of democracy and black tax.
According to Zungu South Africa is in a crisis and considered a country with many contradictions.
“Not so long ago president Ramaphosa promised people two million jobs, last week he contradicted this statement saying that he will now cut down jobs.”
“The aim of democracy is to ensure that the state is there for the majority but in South Africa they fail to do so, specifically in terms of economic transformation,” says Zungu.
He adds that he’s not sure whether unemployment is a racial issue. “On Stats SA in the mining sector about 36 000 jobs have been lost. Most people who get retrenched are black people and most of them are physical labour,” says Zungu.
Johnson stresses that unemployment is a political problem and not something that can be solved by experts.
“The only way we can find a solution is if we have some sort of political consensus on what we want this economy to do for people because our politicians are very limited in their ability to think about our issues with unemployment,” says Johnson.
Questions that were raised by audience members range from: how do we move from being problem-focused to solution-driven? How do we stop blaming apartheid for everything? In terms of system renewal, how do we ensure we hold our leaders accountable? Should we make the rich pay more tax? And, does democracy work for us?
Audience member asking a question to the panel during the talk PHOTO: Lucian van Wyk
According to LLL residence intern and organiser of the talk, Maxwell Mlangeni (23), the key solutions that came out of the talk was “to understand that power lies in the hands of the youth and that we should take charge and drive the implementation of ways that will create more jobs.”
He adds, “Another key solution was the creation of youth spaces whereby the old people who have exhausted their ideas give young people a platform to express themselves, but above all the youth must unite in order to champion this challenge.”
The talk follows the release of the recent figures of Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) unemployment rates. Stats SA reported that the unemployment rates increased from 27,6% to 29% in the labour force in the second half of 2019.
According to the same report, the youth falling in the age group of 15-24 are the most vulnerable in the South African labour market, with the unemployment rate being 55,2% in the first half of 2019. Another alarming statistic is that the graduates in this group have an unemployment rate of 31%.