SAFTU response to the worsening crisis of unemployment

14 May 2019

For goodness sake, no South African can claim to be shocked by the horrific picture presented by the StatsSouthAfrica today the 14th May 2019.

The trends have long been established, and these trends are continuing unabated. The rich are getting richer, and the poor is getting poorer!

Unemployment is worsening, poverty is worsening, and inequalities are worsening. Our public education system is dysfunctional and is reproducing the apartheid and neocolonial economic fault lines. 
Violence directed at the most vulnerable members of the community – the elderly, women and children is getting worse. There is drugs epidemic afflicting, in particular, the black youth. The levels of despair are demonstrated by police statics that demonstrates that our country is the head quarters of the world when it comes to service delivery protests.

The challenge will continue to worsen until the ANC led Alliance government dishes it’s obsession with pro-big business economic policies that have dismally failed the country. 

Our country is one of those that, after the liberation of the majority, the former oppressors lose nothing and the so-called liberated remain the face of poverty, unemployment, inequalities, crime, propertyless and landlessness. 

In response to the worsening crisis, we are pleading with the ANC to stop serving the interests of the powerful in society and begin to think about the 10 million poor masses that voted for them on the 08th of May 2019. We call on the ANC government to abandon the conservative economic policies. The obsession with between 3% – 6% inflation rate when we face these levels of unemployment has not helped. The removal of exchange controls while doing nothing about the illicit cash outflows has robbed this economy trillions of rands so desperately needed to meet our developmental challenges. The reduction of the corporate taxes while increasing VAT and so-called sin taxes that punishes the poor has not only robbed the country of much-needed resources, but has also being behind the growing gulf between the haves and the have-not. 

Issued by Zwelinzima Vavi, SAFTU General Secretary, 14 May 2019