Wake up and smell the truth South Africa! The seeds of hope for our future will only blossom when we invest in our young

This week I noticed the jacarandas cascading in canopies of purple on my daily journey to drop off and fetch my sons at school and university here in Tshwane. And the Highveld afternoon skies are starting to swirl with fat rainclouds. These simple things sprinkle  my heart  (and the  spinach in my backyard garden) with joy. (As my 13-year-old reminded me, his grandchildren will not see jacarandas in Pretoria because they are water-guzzling imports from Brazil – so all the more reason to appreciate them in their last few seasons here.)

We now have a new mayor as well, here in the country’s administrative capital. Our former deputy mayor, ActionSA’s Dr Nasiphi Moya, was voted in as mayor on Wednesday, 9 October. It seems the ANC capitulated to Herman Mashaba’s insistence that ActionSA would only support a new coalition if Moya became mayor.

Moya has her work cut out for her – but she should have deep knowledge and experience of the challenges facing our beleaguered city because she was chief of staff to several DA mayors before leaving the party to join ActionSA, and she became deputy mayor in the last city administration led by DA mayor Cilliers Brink.

Moya earned a PhD in political science from the University of the Western Cape with a thesis titled “The negotiated nation, evaluating nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa”. She is certainly going to have to dig deep into that theoretical knowledge as she negotiates a new partnership with the ANC, EFF and small parties. I hope she succeeds in herding the politicians to serve the people as opposed to their self-interest and does not become yet another mayoral sacrificial lamb to the whims and expedience of her new  partners.

I am allowing myself the luxury of feeling a few tendrils of hope because of a phenomenally inspiring event I attended at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg on Thursday night.

The occasion was the YES (Youth Employment Service) “Top 35 under 35” awards event, in which Daily Maverick was a media partner. YES is the largest full-time, 12-month youth employment programme in the country. You can be inspired by the profiles of some of the top 35 alumni here.

Earlier in the day, I ran a master class in writing from the heart with the 35 YES alumni, and I was blown away by the positive energy of this group of young go-getters. I admired their openness to learning and growing. They have all made great strides for their families and themselves after gaining employment through the YES programme.

Among this group were a couple who feed 500 people with a soup kitchen, data analysts, professional photographers, young media entrepreneurs, restaurant managers and marketing managers. It’s a whole gamut of talent that might never have been given the opportunity to flourish if businesses had not taken a chance on them by sponsoring their placement or employing them, and if the YES team had not nurtured them for work-readiness with a range of training programmes.

YES’s CEO, Ravi Naidoo, reminded us that YES has managed to place 156,000 young people like these top 35 in businesses since 2018, and 45% of them have been absorbed into full-time employment. More than half of these youth come from families who are social grant recipients, but now more than 78% of YES youth are financially supporting others.

YES chair Colin Coleman reminded us that although YES may be making achievements, “our beloved country is frankly losing its war on unemployment”.

Our expanded unemployment stands at 12.4 million South Africans, or 42.6%, up from 8.1 million, or 35.3%, a decade ago. Of those, 7.3 million are young people.

While acknowledging the good work President Cyril Ramaphosa has done by prioritising  the Presidential Employment Initiative, which has created over 1.5 million work and livelihood support opportunities since 2020, Coleman emphasised that increasing economic growth and jobs is now a urgent imperative for this Government of National Unity (“GNU”).

He suggested four systemic changes for economic growth and job creation to happen:

1. Business and government need to “put our money where our mouth is”, lean in to fixed capital expenditure, and reverse the decade long decline in growth of fixed investment.
2. Reprioritise budget expenditure, using zero based budgeting by revisiting Government’s national budget allocations, lower expenditure on salaries and administration, and find space to fund productive investment in industry, small businesses and infrastructure.
3. Industrial policy. It is important to provide space for budget expenditure on industrial incentives to support economic investment, exports and productivity.
4. To secure foreign direct investment, government must understand that investment conferences and overseas roadshows do not translate into new fixed investment. “It is rather the hard work of engaging the world’s largest corporations, one by one, with the objective of dynamically engaging on what package of policies, and incentives, can entice them into large fixed investments in our economy, that will each add the desired billions of dollars, and thousands of jobs into the mix.”

I’m not sure whether these suggestions will find traction with all the parties in the GNU in particular the various conflicting factions of the ANC, but something has to give.

Meeting the YES alumni and hearing about their diverse talents and their contributions to our society, it is clear that our youth jobs crisis is not due to lack of skill, potential, sheer grit and hard work. It’s due to a lack of investment in their potential. Government has to create a more conducive  environment for economic and jobs growth. And more businesses can make an immediate difference to both the economy and our country’s  better chance at a future if they too sponsor  bursaries and job opportunities for the young through YES and other youth employment programs.

We will blossom as a country only when we give more young people like the top 35 YES alumni a chance to shine.

In this week’s DM168 we have quite a few more tendrils of hope for you – with the most inspiring being an interview by Estelle Ellis with the principal of the year from my old hood, Nelson Mandela Bay. Maths teacher turned principal of Paterson High School Rose de Doncker has turned the high school in the ganglands of Schauderville, an impoverished neighbourhood, into an oasis of opportunity and peace, finding the potential in every child. Go Baaienaars! You make us proud.

In our lead story, DA federal chair Helen Zille sits in front of her crystal ball reflecting on the past 100 days of the GNU to tell the future of South Africa. Daily Maverick associate editor Ferial Haffajee spills the beans on Zille’s predictions: will things fall apart if the centre does not hold?

Let me know your thoughts on this and other stories – or send me your spring pictures – by writing to heather@dailymaverick.co.za

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.