About 150 farm workers marched to the Labour Centre in Paarl on Wednesday to hand over a memorandum, calling for better living and working conditions for people on farms in the Western Cape. Photo:GroundUp/Liezl Human
When ANC ministers sloganise about workers’ rights and unemployment – as they do annually on Workers’ Day – they maintain a bizarre disconnect from reality.
And that reality is that they, as part of the government, are responsible for creating a situation in which joblessness is not only the order of the day, but it is growing.
While South Africa is just as hard hit by the gloomy global economic situation at present, our failure to tackle our power crisis has been the cause of many businesses either closing permanently or laying off workers.
On top of that, the collapse of infrastructure, such as rail transport, has also led to mining companies and exporters being unable to get their goods to ports efficiently.
This, in turn, has hit their profit margins and constrained their ability to employ more people.
Also, many businesses cite BEE laws and employment legislation as impediments to investment – and investment creates jobs.
Despite many flowery promises, there have been no real efforts to use state funds to either stimulate the economy in the short term or to create the sort of work programmes which helped countries like the US through the Great Depression.
People cannot eat slogans, they need jobs.