It is well-known that the small business community is the engine room of job creation worldwide.
In a country such as ours where the government has failed the education system, it is vital to create a pathway to employment through the small business community.
Research tells us that small, medium and micro enterprises create more than 60% of the jobs in South Africa. We are trailing far behind the world. Statistics in Europe suggest that more than 75% of jobs are created by the small business community. We must urgently take action, and it certainly won’t be tackled by the ANC government.
I have hope and a strong belief that on May 29, South African citizens will vote in their interest. The biggest problem facing us today is unemployment. Our youth category, ages 16 to 25, is almost 70% unemployed. The only hope for them is to be employed by small businesses to gain training and experience, thereby becoming employable throughout the economy.
The new government, to be formed in June, will and must concede that it can’t be business as usual and that the restraints on the small business community must be removed immediately.
It is interesting to note that in a question put to the minister of employment and labour in Parliament, the minister, once again, unbelievably, missed the point. Our minister of labour never misses an opportunity to evidence his archaic way of thinking. He was asked how the workforce could be safeguarded in the future.
The answer was that the government wants to address further protection of workers and expand the definition of employment relationships. In other words, the destructive thinking of an ANC government is to try to destroy any sort of independence for workers. In the rest of the developed world, that type of thinking changed more than 20 years ago.
The whole idea is to create an environment enabling small businesses to enter into relationships with individuals and not be hampered by onerous legislation. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, and any move to try to stop this would retard job creation. Yes, some jobs will become redundant, and yes, jobs that we don’t recognise will come online. We must embrace it.
This approach of positive thinking is being actively pursued in the Western Cape where the provincial government has brought unemployment to below 20%. The DA governments in the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape have embraced the need to support the development of small and medium-sized businesses in South Africa.
Creating business hubs for small businesses and advice centres to unlock the red tape, coupled with access to funding, has shown the way to job creation. There is no magic to this other than simple logic.
The small business community has reacted positively, starting to invest in their businesses, as opposed to the business community going on an investment strike in the rest of the country. It is wonderful to see that the Western Cape has created 79% of all net jobs in South Africa over the past five years. The statistic alone must tell South Africans where to vote in their interest. Every family can feel the scourge of unemployment, and every family must break the logjam of unemployment.
Politics aside, we need people to get into the workplace. If our citizens were working, many of the ills besetting us in South Africa would disappear. I understand that jobs would help destroy crime, poverty and hunger and increase the money flowing into the fiscus.
By the stroke of a pen, the new government coming in June will look at all the labour regulations retarding the business community and be able to expunge large portions of archaic and restrictive regulations that hinder the small business community every day. The resultant positivity will flow throughout the veins of the South African economy.
* Michael Bagraim is a veteran labour lawyer, and a Democratic Alliance MP.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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