Identifying weaknesses
find employment. The 6.70-million-strong cohort of unemployed people is compounded by a further 2.90-million who have given up looking for a job and 12.70-million who are not economically active (Stats SA, 2021). Exacerbating unemployment is a mismatch between labour demand and supply, with the labour force retaining a large number of low and unskilled people. A nonalignment between the skills that graduates are being equipped with and those which are required by the economy is contributing to the unemployment crisis. South Africa has been suffering from a chronic shortage of skills for many years, notably in the engineering and information and communication technology fields, but government has only recently moved to plug the skills gap through importing skilled labour. Although the move to assist foreign workers with critical skills to gain work permits is welcomed, concerns have been raised about how long it took government to reach this point.
Lack of competition The economy is bedevilled by high concentration, little competition, and anticompetitive behaviour. One participant mentioned that South Africa is a country of fives: Five big banks, five big retailers and five big construction companies. Big players have been accused of questionable collaboration. Collusion, for instance, has occurred in the construction, banking and telecommunication industries. The Competition Commission in 2013 fined 15 construction firms a collective R1.46-billion for collusive tendering (Engineering News, 2013) and in 2017 referred cases of collusion against several international banks for alleged price fixing and market allocation (Engineering News, 2017). A lack of competition holds back innovation, keeps prices high, and denies many people access to services and opportunities to start businesses.
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