Time to bring South Africa’s alarming 34.4% unemployment rate down

THE Langeberg Unemployed Forum notes the report on South Africa’s unemployment data released by Stats SA which tells us that the government has failed to curb devastating joblessness in the country.

In fact, the number of jobless in the land has grown from around 20.74% last year to a record high of 34.4% this year.

We have come to expect that government will do nothing about unemployment, no matter how bad it gets. Unemployment does not happen by accident. It happens when employers are prevented from employing, and the unemployed are not allowed to make their own decisions about conditions of employment and the level of wages. It is that simple. Take away these blocks on employment and mass unemployment will disappear.

A government that claims to care about the unemployed should have stopped everything else to deal decisively with the crisis of unemployment. It cannot be business as usual.

We have been calling on this government to create a special dispensation for unemployed people, a dispensation that will allow them to knock on doors, speak to potential employers and make arrangements with them: an approach that is not allowed by the labour laws.

It is because the unemployed and the employers are not allowed to bargain over jobs that there are so many unemployed people in the country. Unemployed persons must have the right to bargain with potential employers on the basic conditions of employment they are prepared to accept, and the wages that they are willing to be paid.

No one should have the right to tell an unemployed person at what price they can sell their labour. We are in the middle of a crisis of unemployment and unemployed people are crying for freedom.

Give them back their freedom, we say, so that they can make their own decisions about their own lives and the lives of their families.