Africa-Press – South-Africa. Unemployed Soweto youth have been called on to march to Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero’s office on Wednesday to hand over their curriculum vitae and demand to be hired.
This comes after the recently re-elected mayor suggested the city hire foreigners in the Johannesburg metro police department (JMPD) to assist in areas where language barriers hamper investigations that involve suspects from outside South Africa.
Morero made the remarks during an ANC lekgotla gathering. The mayor later reneged on his stance and apologised after opposition parties lambasted him, saying hiring foreigners would worsen the high youth unemployment rate.
In a video shared on TikTok, two individuals invited youth living in Soweto and surrounding areas to join a march to the mayor’s office.
They argue that if Morero has plans to hire foreigners, it means there are vacancies in the JMPD for unemployed youth.
In the video a frustrated Kim Baloyi urges youth to convene at Thokoza Park to march to the mayor’s office.
Baloyi expresses her frustration with Morero’s remarks, saying the challenge of youth unemployment has reached crisis levels where weekends are similar to week days as most youth are jobless.
“Our mayor Dada Morero has decided to fumble. If Dada thinks he can recruit a foreigner to be a JMPD officer, then we must teach him a thing or two. Our government has become comfortable in overlooking and undermining us. It is clear there’s employment in South Africa, but the government is not considering South Africans. We need the jobs so we must all follow each other to his office and hand over our CVs.”
Stats SA reported in May that the number of unemployed people increased by 330,000 to 8.2-million during the first quarter of 2024, placing the unemployment rate at 32.9%, an increase of 0.8%.
The topic of foreigners is contentious in South Africa. Some citizens are accused of being xenophobic, specially towards migrants from the African continent. Many locals, however, argue most migrants are illegally in the country.
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