South Africa faces an unemployment crisis, and the African National Congress’ (ANC’s) manifesto's promise of 3.5-million work opportunities to address this lacks ambition, independent policy research and advocacy organisation Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) executive director Ann Bernstein’s comment piece, first published in the Sunday Times, outlines.

Bernstein points out that the number of people employed in the country has grown by 2.3-million since 2008, while the number of working age South Africans has grown by 9.5-million.

“Speaking broadly, the economy has created less than one new job for every four entrants to the labour market in the past 15 years,” she explains.

Bernstein adds that, even in 2008, the job figures were worrying, with 45% of all working age adults having jobs compared with a global norm of more like 60%.

“The figure now is closer to 40%, implying that we are about 8-million jobs shy of the global norm,” she avers.

Moreover, the eight-million jobs needed increases by about 400 000 every year as the size of the working age population expands, Bernstein points out.  

She explains that, of the 3.5-million work opportunities being promised, 2.5-million are Expanded Public Works Programme- (EPWP-) style projects and the remainder provided to young people in townships and rural areas to help them start or sustain micro-sized businesses.

“In government-speak, work opportunities is what is provided by the EPWP, including the President’s employment stimulus, and consists of temporary, sometimes part-time employment that often pays less than the national minimum wage.

“Formally speaking, these are jobs. But they are temporary jobs. How temporary? Well, the best available evidence suggests that it takes about 2.8 work opportunities to create the equivalent of one year of full-time employment,” Bernstein says. 

She posits that the ANC’s manifesto is therefore promising policies that will create the equivalent of fewer than 1.3-million years of work over the next five years.

“That is the equivalent of the contribution that would be made by 250 000 full-time jobs over five years, or 300 000 jobs if we allow that some are part-time,” Bernstein says. 

She decries that, in the context of the actual number of jobs required, which she estimates at about ten-million jobs to reach a 60% employment rate by 2030, this promise is “insulting”.

“Especially if you consider that most of these work opportunities are simply a continuation of existing programmes, so they are not net new jobs.”

Bernstein points out that, last year, 700 000 people wrote matric and that the ANC is therefore committing to create jobs for considerably less than half of them, and that there will be no such jobs for anyone who matriculates between now and 2028.

“It is important to note that these are primarily government-funded jobs, which have long been the focus of government’s approach to job creation. The manifesto does talk about tackling economic roadblocks in the country (for which government is largely responsible), but there is no sense of urgency, no conviction that a faster-growing, more job-intensive economy is the only way to ever deal with our jobs catastrophe. It all comes across as business as usual,” Bernstein wrote.

She also says the ANC and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plans for job creation are not coherent.

“It’s not that the President has no ideas. It’s that he has so many ideas that it’s impossible to figure out what he thinks drives job creation. . . It’s not that every one of these ideas is bad. Some may even be good.

“The problem is that nothing coheres, there is no sense of how jobs are created in a functional economy: no theory of change nor economic reform that would shape government priorities. It’s a smorgasbord of possibilities designed to create the appearance of action,” Bernstein posits.

“These ideas add up to nothing. That, ultimately, is how a promise to create a paltry number of predominantly government-funded, semi-jobs becomes the centrepiece of the ANC’s election manifesto,” she adds.

In terms of an alternative solution, Bernstein says that, based on historical relationships, the CDE would estimate that average economic growth of 4% would create 400 000 net new jobs a year – “real jobs”, not work opportunities.

She says this would require proper governance and leaders, with a government that has a sense of crisis and urgency and a new approach, designed to unlock the full potential of the private sector, attract investment, and make it easier to hire unskilled work seekers who make up the vast majority of the unemployed.

“Many of the policy goals such a government would implement would be similar to much of what the ANC claims it is committed to: fixing the energy system, reforming the logistics sector, investing in public infrastructure, improving education. The difference between claiming to be pursuing these things and actually delivering them is the difference between words and deeds,” she notes.

“The President’s offer to the electorate must be called out for what it is. The centrepiece of the ruling party’s promise to the electorate, priority number one in its manifesto, is a paltry equivalent of 300 000 low-wage jobs over five years,” Bernstein warns.