Address by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe at the Presidential Youth Indaba on jobs and skills, Ekurhuleni
Programme Director,
Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
The Executive Mayor of Ekurhuleni,
Young people and leaders,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to reflect on government’s programme to create a better future for the youth of our nation. Frantz Fanon’s seems to have our country in mind when he contended that: "Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it, in relative opacity." (Frantz Fanon).
This Indaba comes at a crucial time in South Africa’s development, and her quest for concrete forms of freedoms and identity. It comes at a time when South Africa has just about recovered from the devastating effects of the global economic crisis, as well as at a time when debates about decent work, wage and work security are beginning to intensify and find strong resonance with policy-makers and decision-makers, even across the globe.
Today, we are provided with an opportunity not only to pledge further commitments to the African Youth Charter and the South African Youth Employment Accord, but to provide heightened strategic thinking and analysis towards the formulation of more concrete proposals to the challenges of the youth.
It is our most crucial and urgent task to gather with the purposefulness of mind to develop comprehensive strategies to accelerate job creation and to improve sustainable livelihoods of our youth. This Indaba comes at a crucial time therefore, when youth too as this generation of young people must ‘discover their mission, fulfil or betray in relative opacity’. It falls upon these very young people to be that great generation’ this generation too can be that great generation.
Undoubtedly, one of the most critical challenges facing the Government of South Africa is youth unemployment and poverty.
While this is a growing problem globally, South Africa has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world, which is consistent with the country’s general employment problem. About 3,6m young South Africans between the ages 15-29 have no work, accounting for 71% of the unemployed population. Critically, the majority of people in this age group have never had a job.
Government recognises that the majority of the unemployed youth are low skilled or poorly educated workers, mostly women and youth in rural areas, for which demand has been shrinking due to changes in the domestic structure of production of the economy.
A number of the newly-created jobs have been precarious and of poor quality and many of those jobs are under pressure or have disappeared as a result of the recession, accounting for massive job losses of over 4-million in the last quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009.
Unemployment rates are generally higher amongst youth, female youth being the most affected. Many who are trapped in multi-generational cycles of poverty and exclusion, compounded by poor education, have no social networks, access, funds nor functional competence, to find and keep first jobs.
The South African government therefore recognises that unemployment and poverty in South Africa is largely a youth issue and consequently intends to afford young people the right to gainful employment.
Government has committed itself to dealing with youth poverty in order to ensure that young people benefit from social security and are integrated into the mainstream economy.
Ladies and gentlemen;
At the level of Higher Education, 12,1% of our population now hold a postgraduate qualification, up from 7,1% in 1996. Those who have completed at least secondary school as a percentage of the population has increased from 23,4% in 1996 to 40,5% in 2011.
Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges, so critical to addressing the skills deficit, have benefited from the allocation of R17, 4 billion, with about six hundred and fifty-seven thousand, six hundred and ninety (657 690) students enrolled in FET Colleges in 2013. In the last five years alone, enrolment at FET Colleges has increased by almost 90%.
Financial Assistance offered to students through National Student Financial Aid Scheme continues to increase, with one hundred and eighty seven thousand four hundred and ninety seven (187 497) FET College students assisted in 2012.
Furthermore, two new universities have been established, with the Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape and the University of Mpumalanga enrolling their first students. Government also plans to build a further twelve (12) new FET campuses across the country – mostly in rural areas.
We have invested over a billion rand through The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEFA) to promote youth enterprises.
Programme Director,
Last year we launched the Youth Employment Accord as part of ongoing government efforts to address the challenge of youth unemployment.
The Youth Employment Accord has six commitments, which we believe respond this challenge in a realistic way. The first commitment is on education and training. It commits in particular to improve education and training opportunities for the gap grouping between school-leaving and first employment.
The second commitment is on work exposure, to connect young people with employment opportunities, through support for job placement schemes and work-readiness promotion programmes for young school leavers that provide young people with work experience.
The third commitment is to strengthen measures that increase the number of young people employed in the public sector, through co-ordinating and scaling up existing programmes under a ‘youth brigade’ programme co-ordinated with the National Youth Service Programme.
The fourth commitment is to youth target set-asides in particular industries, particularly new industries where young people can be drawn in large numbers and should be progressively realised.
This include clear targets for new jobs in areas such as infrastructure, the business process services sector and the green economy, particularly the manufacture, installation and maintenance of solar water heaters.
The fifth commitment is to youth entrepreneurship and youth cooperatives. Public agencies such as Small Enterprise Finance Agency, Small Enterprise Development Agency and the Jobs Fund will be encouraged to develop and strengthen dedicated programmes of support for youth enterprises and youth cooperations.
The sixth commitment is to develop private sector measures to expand the intake of young people, with targeted youth support and incentives approved by all constituencies. It is important to improve private-sector youth absorption given that most sustainable new jobs are expected to be created in the private sector.
Ladies and gentlemen;
Finding solutions to youth unemployment is of utmost importance. If we want to increase the absorption and retention of young people into the economy, we need to prioritize pragmatic, demand focused and solutions driven interventions.
These need to be short, medium and long term solutions that focus on sustainable jobs and processes that address both the access barriers that thwart young work-seekers, and the challenges employers face in finding and keeping entry level employees with the work-readiness and skills required.
A key component of the short and medium term solutions require that we, at the very least, address the structural constraints of a large pool of poorly educated, mostly black, youth without the social capital to build workplace skills and access job opportunities. This is possible.
There are a few initiatives that have made inroads in addressing youth unemployment. The Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator is beginning to receive attention as one of the country’s most effective youth employment facilitators.
It is also important to note that South Africa is further faced with the complexities relating to an uneven labour market environment. At the core of South Africa’s youth unemployment challenges lies what is commonly known as labour market dualism.
Millions of youth are trapped in informal, temporary, involuntary part-time or casual work that offers few benefits and limited prospects for advancement. While this may be normal for new entrants to the labour market, informal employment and limited job opportunities mean that there are few opportunities for sustained livelihoods. Employment is often insecure, poorly paid and largely unregulated informal sector.
South Africa labour market economy can be said to be divided into two economies – “a first economy of modern establishments and decent work, and a second economy consisting of a range of precarious and vulnerable forms of work and survival activities.” (Webster, 2008: pii).
The notion of a second economy is a metaphor used to describe the deep structural divisions of South Africa’s economy and should not be taken to mean geographic distinction. The first and second economies constitute an integral component of total national economic activity and are interdependent. However, the second economy is characterised by glaring forms of decent work deficits, which give rise to livelihood risks and vulnerability.
This fact has since prompted Government to affirm the place of transformative social protection in responding to structural poverty and unemployment. It has placed decent work and productive employment at the centre of strategy and macro-economic and labour policy and in the broader context of national development in a bid to transform structural informality that produces and reproduces endless cycles of poverty in the lives of ordinary young citizens.
South Africa has since recognized that decent work is a powerful tool in selecting the path to the attainment of the interrelated goals and human development outcomes of the Millennium Declaration. Procurement policies and public incentives will include requirements to promote decent work.
In line with the declarations of the ordinary meeting of African heads of state in Gambia 2006, the Copenhagen Social Summit of 1995 (WSSD), the aspirations of the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 (MDGs) and the 2004 AU Declaration on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa, South Africa must and will accelerate its efforts to put “youth unemployment” at the centre stage of policy and programmes.
It is also true today, indeed, that “Freedom cannot be achieved unless (all African youth) have been emancipated from all forms of oppression. The objectives of the reconstruction and development programme will not have been realised unless we see in visible practical terms that the condition of (African youth) in our country have radically changed for the better, and that they have been empowered to intervene in all aspects of life as equals with any other member of society” (Former Founding President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, our Global Icon).
These words remain relevant today because our ability to succeed in struggle for an equitable society largely depends on our aptitude to transform the lived experiences of youth in South Africa and to free them from the shackles that currently enslave them.
Truly, the success of this generation will be judged on its ability to address issues of poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment and inequality. Equally posterity will judge our government in terms of the success of measure it puts in place to uplift the lives of our youth as a critical component of society.
South Africa must and will get to the heart of the problem with the aim of fixing it once and for all.
I thank you!
