Youth unemployment must be a priority for political parties

Nkosikhulule Nyembezi

YOU can tell that South African youth will once more be betrayed by politicians by the way they promise to look after them in the run up to the local government elections scheduled for October 27 this year.

The election manifestos are not out yet but, in this year that marks the 45th anniversary of the 16 June 1976 student uprising in Soweto, the vital question that will persist all the way to the inside of voting stations is: what strides has the ANC-led government and all other political parties in di erent municipal councils made in ensuring the youth have better opportunities for employment in South Africa in the face of glaring hardship resulting from chronic unemployment and poverty?

With this year’s government focus on the youth under the theme: “The Year of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke: Growing youth employment for an inclusive and transformed society”, it will be hard to convince voters that the glass is half-full in the face of the recently released Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the fi rst quarter of 2021, which confi rms that young people are still struggling in the South African labour market.

The o cial unemployment rate is 32.6%, while in an increasing number of municipalities, it has constantly stood in the region of 70%.

No wonder there is a loud chorus of political parties demanding the postponement of the elections, even to the extent of criticising the Electoral Commission for proceeding with the statutory mandated preparations. They must be fi nding it hard to imagine campaigning on hollow promises in an environment, where one in every two young people in the labour force did not have a job in the fi rst quarter of 2021 and where conservatively those aged 15–24 years are more vulnerable in the labour market, with an unemployment rate of over 63%, an absorption rate of about 7.6% and, a labour force participation rate of 20.6% under most precarious circumstance.

Even for those who are lucky to be employed, the income is irregular and unpredictable.

At this rate there are very few, if any, young people who will get a job in the next fi ve years.

Instead, many will have to wait until they are above 40 years before getting a chance to participate in the labour force and by which time the politicians they are expected to vote for will have long forgotten about them. What is also concerning is that the unemployment rate among the youth continues to be high irrespective of education level, as the graduate unemployment rate is 40.3% for those aged 15–24 and 15.5% among those aged 25–34 years, while the rate among adults (aged 35–64 years) is 5.4% despite promises of government investment in intervention schemes targeting the youth.

Such stresses are a routine feature of electoral politics in South Africa. Candidates, both independent and those who are party members, will be expected to convince voters that they can change the unemployment situation at local level without being steeped in arguments about who is to blame for the situation.

This inescapable responsibility of convincing voters will only feel new to some opposition parties whose presence and conduct as coalition partners in various municipal councils has contributed to the persistence of the old-time but worsening picture told by the unemployment statistics because, for a generation, the action was in Luthuli House and its command to ANC-led municipalities.

If voters had better understood what was coming their way by either boycotting the elections because of disgruntlement with the corrupt ANC, or by voting for other parties with no prospects of commanding the majority in municipal councils, they might have fought harder for powers of scrutiny of progress, or lack thereof in the coalition-led municipalities, amendment and veto annual budgets and integrated development plans as well as switched support when voting in by-elections.

The electorate has vast leverage over politicians in such matters, even though it has not been demonstrated – not even by the bulging young profi le of voters that bear the brunt of unemployment.

While by-elections remain useful as a national indicator of the likely outcome of the 2021 local government elections, the heavy weight of chronic unemployment on the economic, social, and mental well-being of the electorate will most likely change the political landscape by precipitating the rejection of established political parties and their replacement with realigned coalition partners that does not resemble those formed to unseat the ANC in the 2016 elections.

President Ramaphosa and the ANC should take responsibility for the lack of improvement of the situation.

The underlying tension is between the electoral tactics that delivered the ANC-led government in all three spheres of government and its ideological genesis. Ramaphosa’s appeal to his party and the general public is rooted in the illusion of co-operation among ANC factions and its alliance partners in implementing an agenda that repeatedly brought it into o ce.

That is an agenda focusing on economic growth, reducing poverty and unemployment, as well as weeding out ine ciencies in government bureaucracy while embarking in a buccaneering adventure on the high seas of globalisation.

Whatever is left of the ‘Ramaphoria’ hype must appeal to voters whose economic and social demands point inwards towards a strong government role in unlocking economic opportunities through aggressive implementation of policies that result in economic growth underpinned by massive job creation.

It must be packaged as one coalition that will bring together government, business, labour, and civil society.

However, the government requires choices that pull it apart in order to do away with narrow political interests. This is the kind of reality witnessed in the many missteps in response to the coronavirus pandemic as disunity and infi ghting in the ANC continued to contaminate government policy decisions and actions to the detriment of the unemployed.

Unfortunately, none of the political parties have been able to e ectively challenge this damaging situation. Instead, their agenda is more parochial than they like voters to imagine. They do not weigh election promises in terms of urgency to create jobs or economic growth, but as rhetorical props in their great internal party power struggle showcase.

Who will pay for the production is an issue for later. For now, keeping personal privileges at all costs is a performance put on for a domestic audience by politicians with their backs turned to the general population blighted by unemployment and poverty.