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Pravin Gordhan, Minister of Finance. Photo: Matthew Jordaan.

The time is ripe for a debate on current labour laws, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday in response to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's admission that South Africa might have to change its views on the labour dispensation.

“Minister Gordhan's words are a step in the right direction,” said DA MP Ian Ollis in a statement.

“The latest Stats SA quarterly labour force survey indicates that official unemployment has surged to 25.7 percent, with 174,000 more people added to the ranks of the unemployed in the last three months,” he said.

“Since 2009, when President Jacob Zuma first took office, South Africa has shed a net total of 902,000 jobs.”

Gordhan said earlier on Monday that South Africa might only create four million jobs by 2025 on its current growth trajectory.

“This is not enough to make a significant dent in unemployment,” the minister told an internal auditors conference in Johannesburg.

Gordhan suggested that South Africa might have to relax its labour laws in certain cases to grow jobs.

“We may have to change the way we see the labour dispensation in South Africa,” he said.

For example, a balance needed to be found to retain the jobs of the 10,000 people working at clothing factories in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, while still allowing them to earn a reasonable wage and keep the factories open.

Factories in the area had threatened to close down and relocate to Lesotho or Botswana if they were forced to pay minimum wages.

Gordhan said laws might also have to be relaxed to allow young people to enter the workplace and gain skills and experience at lower wages, but not at the expense of people who already had jobs.

Unless such changes were made, “we will not be able to make the breakthrough we need to create jobs in South Africa,” Gordhan said.

Ollis said the DA had been advocating for a comprehensive jobs and growth-oriented policy revision.

“This would include the relaxation of labour regulations, a tax holiday for newly established small scale enterprises, a general wage subsidy for employers, youth opportunity vouchers to help young people study or start businesses, support for developing industries through industrial development zones and export processing zones, and a drive to reposition South Africa as a preferred investment destination,” he said. - Sapa