Statement by Zwelinzima Vavi on the unemployment statistics, 27 May 2015
In recent years it has become harder and harder to find words strong enough to describe the intolerable level of unemployment in South Africa, the hardship this imposes on the unemployed and their families and the negative impact on the economy of so many people being excluded from the economic life of the country as consumers.
Yet figures issued yesterday by Statistics SA reveal a horror story of unbelievably bad news for workers and the South African economy. The official rate of joblessness in the first quarter of 2015 has now reached 26.4%, up from 24.3% in the previous quarter and the highest since 2003.
The more realistic expanded rate which includes those who have given up looking for work now stands at 36.1%, 1.5% higher than in the last quarter of 2014. This means that 8.7 million South Africans who were able to work were unable to do so.
What is even more alarming is that on the same day, Statistics SA reported that economic growth in the first quarter of 2015 was a paltry 1.3%, down from 4.1% in the last quarter of 2014. That means that the prospect of any early relief for the unemployed is fading fast.
Now more than ever we need to declare that we have a national emergency. No country can survive such levels of unemployment and low growth, a situation which made even worse by the ongoing crisis in Eskom and a drought which has caused agricultural production to fall by 16.6%.
Yet on the very day that these shocking statistics were released, President Zuma was telling Parliament that “Our country is doing very well. The fundamentals are in place. Our institutions are strong and sound. All the arms of the state are functioning effectively: the executive, Parliament and the judiciary. This means are hard-won democracy is safe.”
This is outrageous denialism. How can democracy be safe when unemployment is at the level announced yesterday, when 54.3% of people live in poverty and we are the most unequal society in the world?
In this real world, South Africa is teetering on a knife-edge. The President said in Parliament that “apartheid had introduced a culture of violence in the country” and gave as an example that “ recently some of our people burned a train simply because it had arrived late.”
Yes, apartheid introduced a culture of violence but that cannot explain why it is getting worse after 21 years of democracy. The reality is that violence is a product of millions of people feeling marginalized and excluded by a society in which the rich get richer and the poor are left even further behind, angry and frustrated.
More than ever we need to take seriously the many verbal commitments of the ANC and government to prioritise the transformation of our economy with job creation as top priority. Instead government has allowed that neoliberal economists in the Treasury and the Reserve Bank, and increasingly throughout government as a whole, together with international financial institutions and credit rating agencies to dictate policies which prioritise the maximization of profits and the further enrichment of a predatory capitalist elite.
More urgently than ever, we need to implement the policies unanimously agreed to in the COSATU 11thCongress Declaration, which resolved to embark on a programme of action to drive the radical economic shift in line with the demands of the Freedom Charter. Key demands include:
- Decisive state intervention in strategic sectors of the economy, including through strategic nationalisation and state ownership, and the use of a variety of macro-economic and other levers at the states disposal, which can be deployed to regulate and channel investment, production, consumption and trade to deliberately drive industrialisation, sustainable development, decent employment creation, and regional development, and to break historical patterns of colonial exploitation and dependence.
- Radical overhaul our macro-economic policy in line with the radical economic shift which we all agree needs to happen. To this end we will engage with our alliance partners in the run-up to the ANC Mangaung conference, on the macro-economic policy review.
- A radical economic shift requires that institutionally, the Treasury, which constitutes the biggest obstacle to the government`s economic programme, needs to be urgently realigned; a new mandate needs to be given to the Reserve Bank, which must be nationalised;
- The National Planning Commission must be given a renewed mandate, to realign the national plan, in line with the proposed radical economic shift .
- Aspects of the New Growth Path also need to be realigned in line with the proposed new macro-economic framework.
- All state owned enterprises and state development finance institutions need to be given a new mandate.
- Urgent steps to reverse the current investment strike and export of South African capital. There is currently R1,2 trillion lying idle in social surplus which employers are refusing to invest. These measures need to include capital controls and measures aimed at prescribed investment, and penalising speculation.
- The urgent introduction of comprehensive social security.
- State intervention in strategic sectors including through nationalisation;
- Measures to ensure beneficiation, such as taxes of mineral exports;
- Channelling of retirement funds into productive investment;
- Comprehensive land reform, and measure to ensure food security; and
- The more effective deployment of all state levers to advance industrialisation and the creation of decent work on a large scale.
Statement issued by Zwelinzima Vavi, May 27 2015
