THOBANI ZIKALALA
About half a decade ago while speaking at a Youth Land Indaba which was organised by Activate Change Drivers, I made a bold and shocking statement and said, ‘To end unemployment, we end employment!'.
To say the audience was shocked is an understatement, I received the very same reaction from my friends. Why would someone say such a thing in a country engulfed by shocking numbers of unemployed people with most of them being young people?
I hope in this short piece I will be able to elucidate why this statement holds true. I will draw from our education system, the way our economy is designed and the latest developments in the market with regard to solving the unemployment crisis.
The unemployment rate in South Africa according to the latest statistics sits at 32.6% and this percentage excludes the 3.2 million discouraged job seekers and the 13.3 million people who are not economically active according to Quarterly Labour Force Survey Q2:2023.
Looking at these staggering numbers one must admit that we are in a huge crisis but what can one expect from a capitalist economy? The capitalist economy is designed in such a way that it only absorbs a few to save costs and maximise profit.
To put it more bluntly, it is in the nature of capitalism to keep a reserve labour force to enforce competition and drive down wages. Most of the South African labour force is deemed to be unskilled or semi-skilled which makes them easily disposable or replaceable in the market. Those who are skilled as few as they are, a significant portion of them are either skilled in skills that are not scarce or in demand for the type of market we have.
The issue of skilled or unskilled itself is debatable as shown by Molaodi wa Sekake in his seminal book ‘Socialism NoMuntu Omusha’ when he deals with what he calls the myth of skills shortage. He argues that the definition of skilled in SA is determined according to certification rather than ability and he further says skills are defined in as far as their ability to be used in the market.
The market design of the South African economy is based on the primary sector which by extension means there will be little absorption of the industrial skills that are mostly needed by the secondary sector of the economy which is not very big in South Africa.
The South African economy is largely an extractive economy with very little processing done to add value to products. Most of our extracted natural resources are exported to other markets. What we do not seem to realise is that every time we export for example an ounce of gold, we export jobs too. Countries which are less endowed with natural resources are recording higher numbers of employment than South Africa.
This goes some way to explain why the majority of our graduates, specifically in the field of humanities are reported to be the highest unemployed graduates in South Africa.
Our economy is simply not designed or in a state to absorb them. Save for the fact that South Africa seems to have an oversupply of graduates in this field. Even though that can be disputed with the fact that SA seems to be facing so many challenges that need these social and human scientific skills from crime to drugs and the like.
A question begs about our education system, why are we producing graduates that no one wants to use? Our is a capitalist economy which means we are market-driven, why then do we have a mismatch between the market and our education system?
The 4th industrial revolution is another threat to workers today within this capitalist epoch. The advent of artificial intelligence has meant that workers are going to lose jobs. The capitalist system continues to prove that it never needed humans but the labour they could provide without the human element.
This is a threat to a labour force that is primarily providing unskilled and semi-skilled labour. An education crisis means our people cannot tap into the different sectors of the economy to make a living.
I am no advocate for capitalism, in fact, it is responsible for the many human atrocities around the world in the quest for wealth accumulation and profit maximisation.
All this is done at the expense of the majority who are excluded from the ownership of means of production which are owned by the few who then determine the workings of the market.
This then means that the majority survive at the behest of the capitalist class who survive on their exploitation.
This leads us to vehemently dispute the claim of the classical economy theories which say the fundamental economic problem is the scarcity of resources. Instead, we must say the fundamental economic problem is the abundance of resources which is accompanied by the abundance of greed. The greed of those who want to own and control all resources.
What is to be done? The first thing to do is to overhaul the current economic market together with its labour market which is guided by the classical labour market theory.
This labour market theory dictates that market forces dictate the market. In that, the demand/supply of labour determines the market and in turn argues that there is voluntary unemployment because of the unwillingness to work at a particular wage as determined by the market.
This theory justifies exploitation. Moving towards a more socialist trajectory will mean there must be a socialisation of the means of production amongst the people which then suppresses the class division and means everyone has access to them.
These means of production are land and capital amongst others. This then will deal with the concept of employment as we know it today, as workers will now be working for themselves.
All the challenges we are facing need a radical shift in the economy. The economy as it stands cannot and will not absorb all which means we must begin to imagine outside of it.
I hope that with all the highlighted points above, we can begin to understand how the concept of employment in itself is problematic and how its existence ensures unemployment.
The concept of employment is informed by the capitalist logic that says one must work for another for the purpose of profit and for the purpose of deriving a wage for one to be considered employed. This essentially means someone doing any work outside of this logic is not working and therefore unemployed.
Now to end unemployment we must defeat this logic with its system which is capitalism and usher in socialism.
In socialism, it will be easier to embrace the 4th industrial revolution, with means of production socialised and robots doing the work. People can finally focus on other things of social construction and maybe the humanities graduate can finally have work to do.
Our education shall, as Sobukwe and Nyerere long posited mean a service to Africa and her people and not for the purpose of capital maintenance and profit maximisation.
In conclusion, to end unemployment, we must defeat capitalism as unemployment is its offshoot.
Thobani Zikalala is an Independent Political Commentator.
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