Can the ANC, DA and EFF deliver on their jobs promises?
Every political party contesting the upcoming general elections is promising to grow the economy and create jobs for unemployed voters.
The country has a labour force of about 24.6-million people, but nearly 12-million can’t find jobs. Just more than a quarter of these jobseekers are so despondent that they have entirely given up looking for work. Their job-hunting efforts are frustrated by an economy that has been stagnant for more than a decade, and the fact that few qualify for those well-paid, decent jobs that are on offer.
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana expects the economy to limp along at an uninspiring average growth rate of 1.6% over the next three years, underperforming the global economy, which is projected to grow 3.1% in 2024 and 3.2% in 2025. Our economy is being choked by myriad bottlenecks.
The country’s three biggest political parties, the ANC, DA and EFF, have unveiled their election manifestos, as have smaller parties such as the UDM, Rise Mzansi and Freedom Front Plus. All claim they can grow the economy and reduce unemployment, which has climbed to 42.4% from 28.6% in 1994 in terms of the broader definition, which includes discouraged work seekers.
This extremely high level of unemployment is the main reason SA has become a huge welfare state, providing social grants to nearly 28-million people. In 1996, only 2.4million people received social grants. Many economists believe the economy needs to grow consistently at least by 6% annually to make a real dent in unemployment.
While the election manifestos of political parties have a lot in common when it comes to promises to stimulate the economy through attracting investment, promoting local industrialisation, fixing broken infrastructure and making the labour market globally competitive, they subscribe to different economic ideologies, ranging from far-right free market philosophies to extreme left communist ideologies.
Given that SA is a culturally diverse country with extremely high unemployment and wealth inequality, there is an eager market for the most extreme ideologies. The ANC, which lost support in the last general and municipal elections, is trying to woo voters back with promises of transforming the economy to benefit the poor. According to its manifesto, the party intends using expropriation clauses to accelerate land reform and redistribution, and will introduce prescribed assets to force financial institutions to invest a portion of their funds in infrastructure and industrial development.
On the other hand the DA says in its manifesto that it will create 2-million jobs over the next five years if it is given a mandate to govern. The party says it can achieve this by cutting red tape to allow SMMEs to flourish, and by streamlining bylaws to make it easier for informal traders to sell their goods and services.
It also promises to turn SA into a competitive, exportorientated economy that takes advantage of trade agreements with its trading partners. This will require ending electricity and water load-shedding.
The DA believes broadbased BEE has worsened poverty and unemployment, and it therefore wants to repeal related policies such as employment equity and preferential procurement, and replace them with policies that measure progress towards achieving the UN sustainable development goals as an indicator of redress and development, instead of using race as a proxy for disadvantage.
The country’s third-biggest political party, the EFF, says it has a plan to create millions of jobs between 2024 and 2029. Although the party’s 260page manifesto is littered with its trademark radical left-wing rhetoric of expropriating land without compensation and nationalising mines and banks without compensation, it is proposing interesting economic policies.
It says if elected to power it will introduce a three-shift system (morning, afternoon and night), which will enable the economy to operate around the clock to ensure continuous productivity and employment creation. The EFF promises to create no fewer than 1-million jobs in the ocean economy, opening opportunities for people to work in construction of harbours, shipbuilding, fishing and marine tourism.
The ideologies of these political parties may be different, but their failure or success will depend on turning the tide on unemployment and economic stagnation, which will require skill and implementation know-how.
As former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously said, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice ”— an expression Nelson Mandela repeated when asked during the dying days of apartheid whether the ANC would pursue socialist or capitalist policies if it came to power.