Mda calls for mandatory three-year internships for graduates

Independent candidate said the 12 months of work experience afforded to interns currently often ended up collapsing

Independent candidate Anele Mda, who is vying for a seat in the National Assembly after the May 29 elections, wants mandatory three-year internships for unemployed graduates to be introduced in both the government and private sectors.

“Currently all workplaces, when they are employing, the minimum standard they ask for is two years of work experience, yet on the other side the state has 12-month internships,” the seasoned politician said.

“So the companies also offer young people 12-month internships, but what happens after that 12 months ends? They go back to being the unemployed people they were.”

In a wide-ranging interview with the Dispatch, Mda, an Eastern Cape-born gender justice activist, businesswoman and politician, who has served as an ANC Youth League member and a COPE MP, said a standardised three-year internship would better equip unemployed graduates.

Mda, who was born in Mbizana but grew up at her grandmother’s home in Flagstaff, said the 12 months of work experience afforded to interns at present often ended up “collapsing, being invalid or expiring”.

“That 12 months, if it was not effectively transferred into a workplace again, is effectively null and void,” she said.

“A firm proposal I am bringing is the one that says the government must introduce mandatory three-year internships for all companies both government and corporate.

“And when they do so, for companies to go to the department of employment & labour to claim their compensation, they must do so after the intern has been offered full employment [by the company].

“That is how we will measure the effectiveness of these internships not for them to become box-ticking exercises for companies to make money exploiting the supposed beneficiaries who end up not being beneficiaries.

“Because you are not a beneficiary when an internship aimed at equipping you with work experience sends you home to do nothing after 12 months.”

For the first time in SA, independent candidates have an opportunity to contest for a seat in either a provincial legislature or the National Assembly. They are not allowed to contest for both simultaneously.

This is after President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Electoral Amendment Bill into law in April 2023, requiring independent candidates to have a minimum of 10,000 signatures to be allowed to contest the provincial or national elections.

But after the Independent Candidates’ Association of SA and One Movement SA took the matter to the Constitutional Court to challenge certain provisions in the amended law, the court ruled that the requirement was unconstitutional.

As a result, independent candidates now only need 1,000 signatures to be on the ballot.

Mda, meanwhile, has also been vocal about the need to clamp down on graft in the state tendering system, saying it had become “a breeding ground for corruption by people who have no ability to do business on merit in this country”.

She also wants office bearers to undergo rotational lifestyle audits.

“This will ensure accountability and that the accumulation of assets can be accounted for and will be declared publicly.

“That will make sure we don’t mix with dodgy characters who bankroll our lives and by doing so put us in a position of having to connive and use our offices we have been given authority over by the public and do favours.”