Government destroying jobs and job creation

DURING his anti-poor and anti-black State of the Nation address, Cyril Ramaphosa said the government did not create jobs.

He was right, but the government does have a responsibility to ensure a friendlier environment for local and international investors to make investments in our struggling economy.

The government has a responsibility to ensure a conducive and sustainable business environment in order for jobs to be created by the private sector. The conditions include fewer state regulations or interference, consequence management against public and private corruption, building and maintenance of infrastructure and quality service delivery.

South Africa is, yet again, in the middle of what has become part of their lives – load shedding. Small businesses are faced with possible closure because they are not able to make money. Why should they continue to pay rent or their employees when they do not make money due to the government’s failure to produce electricity?

We accept that the government should not be creating jobs but is it acceptable for the government to deliberately destroy job or business opportunities for private citizens? It does not make sense.

There is a great need to declare a “state of disaster” with regard to Eskom. We cannot normalise and accept a persistent energy crisis where we are not told how it will be tackled.

Let us leave Eskom for now. Remember the biggest cheese factory, Clover, shutting in Lichtenburg last year? More than 330 people woke up without jobs because the local government (Ditsobotla Municipality) failed to provide quality service delivery.

What will happen to the economy of Ditsobotla? Poor service delivery is often a result of corruption and/or ineptitude. If the North West Municipality had the right people, there would be no need for the company to leave town as water and electricity would always be available.

In a scathing report by the CSIR energy centre, from 2019 when South Africa experienced its worst load shedding, it cost the economy between R60 billion and R120bn. Is there a political will to fix Eskom? Are we going to blame Jan van Riebeck or the Gupta brothers? The ANC should take responsibility for this gibberish.

Since 2017, South Africa has been experiencing an energy crisis, but there has not been enough conversation, especially on the political front, on how that catastrophe would be fixed. The ANC-led government has, instead, invested much of its time trying to make people understand the crisis and get them used to the darkness, and without any doubt, they succeeded as people “understand”.

Sometimes it becomes impossible to make a comparison between the post-1994 government and the apartheid government. The apartheid government was able to create and manage the state-owned enterprises while the post-1984 government failed to sustain companies that would help create jobs for many unemployed people and continue to make money which would be used to create other opportunities.

Ramaphosa should know that it is during his term that unemployment has reached high levels, and people are continuing to lose their jobs.

To show that he is living in his own world, he is surprised when people boo him. He should smell the coffee. The people on the ground are angrier than the ANC thinks.