How should we respond to school leavers who say, ‘I don’t care about politics or what happened in the past, I just want a real job’?

If they faced a merely difficult job market, we might encourage them to study diligently and try ever harder. However, a majority of South Africans who have left school in recent years have yet to find formal employment and, with the situation continuing to deteriorate, most of them will continually be passed over for more experienced or younger applicants. They didn’t create this situation and their trying harder won’t fix it.

Our current leaders have created the world’s worst youth unemployment crisis. The ANC was very successful at using racial inequality to politically camouflage its rolling out a massive patronage network. Outsiders could not stop it and now the party itself is committed to supporting the patronage it has spawned.

The ANC has used government funding and regulations to create more patronage – and more patronage jobs – than the economy can support. Their policies are also so detrimental toward competitiveness that expansion through value-added exports is also undermined. The private sector, along with the official opposition and some other moderate parties, has responded by seeking to work with our governing party in pursuit of investment-led growth while targeting corruption.

None of this is sustainable. The ANC doesn’t seem to be able to change course, nor does it seem that its hold on power could survive past 2029. If the party is too morally compromised to prosecute the perpetrators that outnumber the less vile within its midst, would its leaders accept defeat in 2029?

On the plus side, next year’s election could produce a reform-minded national coalition government. The trend of voter surveys suggests that ANC support could slip below 40%. Meanwhile, the EFF’s embrace of violence and anarchy could undermine its appeal with voters as an alignment partner.

Conversely, high among the reasons a decisively positive outcome next year remains unlikely is that there is no plan that would meaningfully improve the lives of the poor and unemployed, who constitute a majority of South African adults. Fixing the economy and upliftment have become only loosely correlated.

The ANC’s reliance on patronage-based electoral support results in vulnerabilities for the party and traps for opponents. While Eskom’s woes have greatly damaged the ANC’s already battered image, it isn’t obvious how opposition parties should handle some residents and communities not paying for electricity and their debts being forgiven. Distinguishing patronage from corruption or poverty alleviation can be tricky?

Messaging that would woo 

The election could pivot decisively on a big turn-out by young unemployed voters. But where is the messaging that would woo them?  

The ANC has framed our youth unemployment crisis as a moral tradeoff between maintaining fiscal responsibility and the need for compassionate “sub-subsistence” payments. Big business and moderate opposition parties have accepted such framing while advocating for investment-led growth  ̶  which the ANC also supports.  

If the DA entered into a coalition national government with the ANC, policies and practices would be upgraded, leading to larger investment flows. Yet today’s poor and unemployed would remain, for the most part, poor and unemployed.

Focusing on policies and practices which would foster investment-led growth are sensible and they should be supported. But the affluent don’t seem to appreciate that this will do very little for the millions of young, unemployed South African adults. 

Campaigning for investment-led growth won’t resonate with this huge voting bloc because it won’t deliver for them. Best-case outcomes at attracting investments would have a small impact on youth unemployment. Nor however can the ANC still campaign effectively by promising jobs. Most voters know that the ANC’s capacity to expand its patronage is modest at best.

Upheaval, if not insurrections

Normally, it would be perfectly reasonable that our opposition parties and business leaders prioritise GDP growth, investment flows, debt-to-GDP and the like. But abundant resource wealth has allowed the ANC to indulge in blatantly patronage-focused policies while ignoring how 21st century economic success requires intense global integration.

There are no plausible scenarios where we reduce unemployment to a normal level within a generation without much greater global integration. We have by far the world’s worst crisis of entrenched youth unemployment and it is widely expected to get worse in the coming years. Other countries go to great lengths to avoid such crises, as they are incredibly difficult to remedy and they set the stage for bad actors to incite upheaval, if not insurrections.

Our job-creation discourse mixes elitism, ignorance and defeatism. It is irreconcilable with how dozens of countries successfully embraced 21st century opportunities. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sidelining a majority of our young adults.

There is no denying that our education outcomes are horrendous, but most skill development happens on the job. Our per capita income peaked over a decade ago and it is likely to stagnate, or decline, over the next decade. This implies our youth unemployment fiasco can only compound.

The South African approach to international integration rarely creates jobs in South Africa. It is more often about buying overseas operations or recreating what works here, such as Investec or Nando’s. The models common to successful developing nations are quite different. They tend toward specialising within a small segment of an extensive international supply chain. 

ANC policies and practices which advance patronage undermine competitiveness, efficiency and merit. This won’t be overcome in one step. Ideally, success would involve ousting the ANC. As a realistic first step, its many anti-growth biases must be constrained. 

Special economic zones

One possible compromise would be to have special economic zones, determined geographically or by their commitment to creating jobs, which enjoy special dispensations from anti-competitive regulations so long as their output is exported. This wouldn’t threaten the ANC’s fixation with maximising domestic patronage.

As the ANC has failed them spectacularly and we focused on criticising the ANC without developing solutions, our only legitimate response to motivated school leavers who just want a real job and don’t care about politics or the past is to not say anything, while wishing we had done more.

It’s not too late to redeem ourselves but, if next year’s election goes badly, then it will be.