Get serious about jobs
ON SUNDAY, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was addressing a hall filled with the ANC’s faithful in Stellenbosch. He was there to give the main address on what was supposed to be the party’s provincial policy conference, instead those in the hall had scant interest in some of the policy proposals coming from the ruling party.
A significant number had come out to express support for either Ramaphosa – who is campaigning to succeed the scandal-plagued President Jacob Zuma – or Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
Ramaphosa essentially called for policies which would create jobs.
Around the time Ramaphosa was addressing his party faithful on Sunday, a violent scene was playing itself out 30km away in Lavender Hill, where a gang war has been raging for the past few weeks.
A young man had been shot, as a gangster emptied out the cartridge of his gun. So bad was the gunman’s aim that only two of the bullets hit the youngster.
The gangsters also fired several shots into a triple-storey block of flats as residents scattered for safety.
Most of the gang violence in Lavender Hill, and on the Cape Flats, is drug-fuelled as gangsters seek to expand their turf to drive their profits.
Since 1994 the government’s responses to dealing with gang violence, and to a lesser extent the drug trade on the Cape Flats, have been to deploy more police to areas affected by this scourge.
Most police officers and social workers will tell you that the problem goes beyond just additional police officers. Lavender Hill and many other such areas bare testimony to failed social and economic policies.
When the ANC meets in December, delegates at its elective conference need to seriously interrogate those vying for leadership on how exactly they will expand South Africa’s economy so that it finally can create jobs for communities under siege of drugs and gang violence.
If Ramaphosa is serious about creating jobs, one place would be to start in Lavender Hill, where the average annual income is R29 400 and unemployment stands at 56% – twice the national average.
The destructive policies which have led to South Africa’s deindustrialisation can be laid at the door of successive ANC administrations which stood by idly as numerous sectors of the economy shed jobs.