Africa-Press – South-Africa. Nearly half of individual taxpayers in South Africa earn less than R6 700 per month, and simply getting the country to a point where each household has minimum one working member will require some 2 million new jobs, writes Hlumelo Biko.
At the beginning of Freedom Month, Build One South Africa (BOSA) facilitated a town hall discussion with a panel of experts in the field of entrepreneurship to unpack how we break the back of deeply rooted unemployment in South Africa.
The notion is self-evident that while political freedom was attained in 1994, economic freedom has yet to be achieved by the vast majority of South Africans. This is the freedom to find meaningful work, pursue a career of choice, and to provide a comfortable life for family and loved ones. Freedom from poverty and indignity.
Adding new, meaningful jobs into our economy is something that originally attracted me to business at the age of 22. Through studying the investment world, I became convinced that those with capital can partner with those who have novel ideas to create jobs. I spent 20 years in pursuit of that balance between capital, ideas and job creation.
Government’s role is to ensure that the incentives for the private sector are such that all aspiring members of the business community are free to showcase their ideas in pursuit of an opportunity to be funded. And that is where business and politics intersect. We need champions of those overlooked South Africans in need of a supportive government that can back their talents and get out of their way as they seek to create jobs and build the industries of the future.
Our town hall panel comprised three esteemed South Africans who grasp this intersection and how to maximise its effectiveness in addressing unemployment.
Ntokozo Biyela is a serial entrepreneur who has spent two decades specialising in entrepreneurship and enterprise development. He is a well-known business consultant, author, and a social commentator turned BOSA KwaZulu-Natal provincial leader.
Leon Lategan is also a serial entrepreneur who has founded and led a series of successful enterprises. He has coached, trained and spoken to over 50 000 entrepreneurs online and he has been invited to speak in 21 cities globally. His latest venture, the School of Entrepreneurship, exists to create entrepreneurs because they possess the ability to spur economic growth and improve living standards for all. His team aims to develop 10 000 new entrepreneurs in the next five years. They focus on entrepreneurs who are capable of starting sustainable and profitable businesses that create jobs.
Lemogang is a mindset change trainer, an experienced logistics professional with 18 years’ experience working with some of the world’s largest multinational firms. She is a passionate planet conservationist who serves in several NPOs and communities as a life coach and a distribution specialist. Lemo is passionate about personal development and self-leadership. Lemo’s name means consciousness/realisation, which aptly describes her work as a coach and change agent. She now runs the National Unemployed Workers Union (NUWU).
The panel unpacked the harsh economic terrain of the day, assessing what needs to change in order to significantly move the needle on job creation.
Of the approximately 60 million South Africans, only 16 million are able to work. To use a comparison, the US has 333 million people of which more than 160 million people are working.
With an estimated 18 million households averaging 3.3 persons per household, to put a job in every home – at a minimum – will require at least 2 million new jobs.
Secondary to this mission is to improve the quality and skill of the South African workforce so they can earn a higher average income than R6 700 or less a month. Currently, the pool of unemployed citizens is growing at a faster rate than the pool of employed citizens. Over time, this is a trend that will greatly damage our country.
But if we are to create 2 million new jobs, we must find ways of growing the economy.
This requires two things: a vibrant private sector in the cities, townships and rural areas that is free to create vigorous economic growth, supported by a public sector that exists not only to create jobs for the well-connected, but that employs only the best people whose passion is to deliver excellent services to the people of South Africa.
Several initiatives will contribute to this.
The immediate creation of Township Special Economic Zones (TSEZs). These can be funded from the sale of listed shares owned by government’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) currently valued at R200 billion. Government doesn’t need to own shares in big companies. Rather, township economies need to be stimulated and funded to uplift communities, create new jobs and wealth for disadvantaged citizens.
Establishing a vastly expanded public works programme. Any person of working age who is unemployed should have the opportunity to enrol in a variety of community service projects near their homes, which can be privately or government-run, and range from general cleanups to community patrols, and assistance on infrastructure repair or construction projects.
These projects can pay wages at the current public works rate of over R100 a day and create an opportunity for at least one day of paid work per week for every unemployed individual. We know this is not a lot, but it is a realistic start to giving millions of people the opportunity and dignity of earning an income to supplement what they receive from government grants.
In parallel to this initiative, we propose a complementary private sector-led initiative that can create the opportunity for unemployed people to accept employment from a private employer under similar wage and health and safety conditions as those of the public works programme. If we want the private sector to employ more people, we need to make it easier for them to do so.
We also propose the introduction of a voluntary National Civilian Service year that bridges the transition from school into the working world. This year will allow matriculants to enter into work-based training in community healthcare, basic education, civil service or community policing, gaining valuable work experience while earning a small stipend.
We further recommend a tax holiday for anyone who employs TVET college graduates transitioning from education into the workforce, as well as the introduction of entrepreneurship grants to deserving matriculants and graduates who want to start their own business, with a tax holiday to young graduates to help them find their financial feet while shielding them from the debilitating effects of ‘black tax’.
Current empowerment policies must be overhauled since they serve only established elites. It is unacceptable that empowerment creates a few billionaires while millions of black people continue to live in shacks. We must introduce new empowerment policies that focus on helping poor people get into the middle classes by rewarding companies that contribute to the hard quantitative measures of new employment creation, employment maintenance, tax payments and export contributions, as well as financing public works schemes, school vouchers and university grants, and low fee home loans and health insurance.
Also essential is the establishment of a Jobs and Justice Venture Capital Fund to which businesses contribute empowerment funding, and which is administered by public finance professionals, not politicians. This would ensure real empowerment by supercharging Kasinomics, through distribution to real empowerment initiatives which bridge the gap between power and potential.
The ancient Chinese book called the Dao De Jing warns us: “When they no longer trust themselves, they begin to depend upon authority.” We must heed this warning.
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