SA should be aiming a lot higher on job creation: Geordin Hill-Lewis

South Africa has set a target of creating one million jobs by 2030, but Geordin Hill-Lewis argues that goal undersells what is possible. Drawing on Cape Town's employment record over the past five years, the DA leader makes the case that better basic governance, not new job schemes, is what unlocks growth. He points to the city's fast-growing boatbuilding sector as evidence, and to one worker whose new job has changed her family's circumstances. For South Africans watching unemployment figures with growing unease, it is a reminder that the debate over ambition, and over which government approach actually works, is far from settled..By Geordin Hill-Lewis.President Cyril Ramaphosa recently set South Africa the ambition to create one million additional jobs by 2030.I welcome it. And we all should.In a country with 8.5 million officially unemployed people, creating jobs should be close to a national obsession. We should measure almost every major economic policy against the simple question whether it would help more South Africans find work. But this should also make it clear that the reform incrementalism currently favoured by President Ramaphosa is not up to meeting the size of the crisis. One million jobs in four years is not nearly bold enough. In just the last five years, Cape Town alone has added 418 000 jobs. Cape Town accounted for almost half of all net new jobs created across South Africa’s eight metros over this period. The City added more jobs than Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Buffalo City, Nelson Mandela Bay and Mangaung combined.One city has created almost half the number of jobs that the national state is now targeting for the entire South African economy. And in the next term as Mayor of Cape Town we will continue getting the basics right so the businesses in the City can create another 580 000 jobs to bring the total to 1 million jobs created since 2021. Now this is not a point of triumphalism. The point is that if Cape Town can do this, why can’t South Africa aim much higher? If we get all our cities and towns working (or even just the big ones) South Africa can easily create 1 million jobs per year. With competent, honest and hardworking governments creating the environment for businesses to flourish South Africa’s unemployment crisis can be solved. And it can be solved speedily.What is encouraging is that President Ramaphosa’s diagnosis of how jobs are created is broadly correct. It is a welcome departure from the traditional ANC idea that the government must create jobs. Government cannot employ South Africa out of unemployment.Businesses, entrepreneurs and investors create sustainable jobs. A person who sees an opportunity, risks capital, builds something customers want and eventually needs another pair of hands creates a job.Government’s role is to create the conditions in which that happens. Get the electricity working. Maintain the roads. Build water infrastructure. Process applications quickly. Keep public finances under control. Make it easier, rather than harder, to invest and employ someone. That’s how the DA governed local governments and provinces are able to achieve considerably lower unemployment than the rest of the country, despite unfavourable national policy. This may sound almost too mundane for a country facing an unemployment crisis. But it works.I recently spoke at a yacht manufacturer, announcing our plans to ensure that a further 580 000 jobs are created in our next term of office. Cape Town has quietly become one of the world’s great boatbuilding centres. South Africa is now the second-largest producer of recreational catamarans in the world, with the industry heavily concentrated in the Western Cape. Billions of rands worth of locally built yachts are exported from Cape Town to customers around the world.Those boats may eventually be seen anchored somewhere in the Caribbean or Mediterranean, but their economic story and most importantly their purchase prices, come home here. Hundreds of designers, engineers, electricians, carpenters, welders, composite technicians and upholsterers are employed in this growing industry. And the economic benefit extends to hundreds of smaller suppliers and service businesses.And it reaches places like Delft. At the yacht factory, I met Tarryn, a woman from Delft who, for the first time found work, in Cape Town’s growing yacht-building industry.For an economist, she is one unit in an employment statistic. But for her family, she is so much more. Her job means groceries, school shoes and a taxi fare to work. Perhaps an appliance bought from a local retailer. Perhaps eventually a deposit on a home or money put aside for a child’s education.And almost every rand she spends becomes somebody else’s income.That is why unemployment is not only a tragedy for the unemployed. It makes all of us poorer.We cannot afford the unambitious target of only one million jobs in the next four years. We must aim higher and move faster in the reform agenda. We have evidence that better government, infrastructure investment and a business-friendly environment can produce extraordinary employment growth. The task now is to do much more of it, and at a faster, more ambitious pace.South Africa is a country of extraordinary entrepreneurs, workers and businesses. We do not suffer from a shortage of talent or ambition. We suffer from a state that makes productive activity unnecessarily difficult.Fix that, and our economic ceiling changes.If one South African city can create 418 000 jobs in five years, then a country of more than 60 million people should dream much bigger..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

SA should be aiming a lot higher on job creation: Geordin Hill-Lewis

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