One in four South Africans are officially unemployed, while 60 percent of the youth are unofficially not active. Hence the problem is staring government in the face – a lack of jobs is the bedrock to most of the country’s issues. In the piece below Cape Messenger Editor Donwald Pressly reports back from the Cape Town Press Club, where he’s the chairperson. The talk was on ways to turbo charge South Africa with smart ways of job creation at the core. Part of the conclusion said South Africa needs a new agenda for accelerated growth that is urban-led and private sector driven. And most important of all it needs a smart state. – Stuart Lowman
By Donwald Pressly*

There is little doubt that there is nothing more important in the struggle to build a successful South Africa than focusing on the eight million unemployed people. That is the figure that the official opposition gives for the country’s unemployed. Ann Bernstein, director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, puts the figure a little lower – at about seven million.
Whatever it is, it is staggeringly high. Only about six milllion pay tax, PAYE. Only some 12 million actually have jobs – but obviously don’t earn enough to pay tax. About half of South Africans can be considered poor. Bernstein says that it is considered normal to have 60 percent of a nation’s population in work, SA has about 42%. We won’t go into all the depressing figures – but the South African Government is playing around while Manenberg and Lavender Hill burn.
At the Cape Town Press Club last week, Don Pinnock (author of Gang Town, his new book on the gangs of the Mother City), spoke about how a gang member was effectively nurtured in the womb. If an embryo is under stress at that time – that child is born to act more aggressively, to do things which “normal” children would not do. If the embryo is underfed, it feels its mother’s stress. If the mother is drinking some substance, the child that is born is programmed in a certain way.
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There are a variety of reasons why a child joins a gang, but this seems like a key ingredient. Obviously the circumstances of poverty, the absence of fathers and nurture factors also play a role in driving a boy – or even a girl – into a “merchant” gang. Pinnock calls it that because these gang members trade – often violently and by coercion – in goods.
We need to start tackling the factors of poverty when mothers are pregnant. That is why the City of Cape Town is taking steps to reintroduce appropriate nursing care for pregnant mothers – Pinnock himself has been advising city mayoral policing member JP Smith on this programme. But gangs, and pushing children into a violent gang culture, are just symptoms of poverty.
While a social welfare net is in place, it is too limited. The social grants are far too low to make a difference. Pinnock says that South Africans should adopt the Zimbabwean approach – make sure that young people learn a craft at school. Apparently the Zimbabwean missionaries encouraged this and this is one of the positive consequences of colonialism. I pressed Pinnock – who happens to be my old journalism school lecturer – whether he still held on to socialist notions of minimum wages, a protected labour market and other dotty left-wing ideas. He dodged that question. Bernstein, who also spoke at the press club, says these are not helpful because they protect the employed.
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What Pinnock and Bernstein are agreed upon is that we need to rocket millions of South Africans out of poverty and unemployment. Strip away minimum wages, make sure someone has a job being paid whatever – even if it is a tiny amount – and the door is open to upward mobility. Pinnock may not agree with that, but to some extent the informal economy has taken to heed his argument that a person with a craft is potentially, at least, informally employed.
We need a new economic philosophy in South Africa. The National Development Plan is not being implemented. One of the reasons for that is it is too complicated. It has about 120 economy-building proposals – far too many. Bernstein is right. We need to turbo-charge our country’s economy with a new vision. We need “a new agenda for accelerated growth that is urban-led, private sector driven”. But, perhaps most important of all it needs a smart state – not an overpaid ineffective one we generally have – which targets mass employment creation.
- Donwald Pressly, Editor of Cape Messenger