Lets tackle misinformation about unemployment!

Image by Stoddard (2020)/Daily Maverick

 ✏ by Faranani Budeli    

Save Tomorrow Youth Foundation is a non-governmental organisation that focuses on youth related social issues in this case 'unemployment' . We get the questions: 'Why is there always an increase in unemployment rate?', 'There are vacancies in the education department but why aren't they hiring?' and 'Is the government responsible for unemployment?'. Although these are very difficult questions to answer considering all the misinformation amongst our youth, it is our duty to re-inform our youth community about this issue. Our main objective is to address social issues with facts and create awareness about misinformation as it can have a negative impact on our society. Ramakrishna once said "the world is a mixture of truth and make-believe, but discard the make-believe and take the truth". As an organisation, it is our duty to help our youth discard the make-believe and inform them about what is really happening in our country! 

Unemployment is not exactly a new term, it has been a problem in our country for a long time. Some believe it became an issue after democracy in 1994. Now lets talk about the 'the nature of the beast', where it all started. According to (Kingdon & Knight, 2003 ), unemployment dates back to 2002 where it was measured at 41% and less than 30% being the youth.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about unemployment and how it is the root of all our social problems. When I started this organisation my questions were, "what are the possible real factors that drive unemployment in our country?", "What is the root of all this" and "what are the possible solutions to these factors?", and there are a lot of possible factors. Some of these factors include: Apartheid Legacy, poor education and training, global recession(2008/2009), and trade union federations role in government. All these factors still need to be addressed and considered whenever we look at our government and direct all the blame to them. Our economy is already in shambles, people are being retrenched everyday as our economy is on a decline mode. We also need to consider the fact that in this country more people reach the working age as compared to the number of jobs available in the labour market. We are a developing country with a young population. 

And then there is this part, 'Lack of interest for entrepreneurship' amongst our youth. Most of our youth think after graduating with a degree, the government is obliged to give them jobs on a silver platter or  automatically. YOU ARE WRONG! We need to wake up and make things happen for ourselves. Start small businesses and work our way to the top, because no one is going to do that for us. We see young people everyday on these streets, selling muffins and cookies to make a living. Most of these young people are graduates with degrees. As soon as we acknowledge this matter, the better. 

Unemployment is a primary issue in our country. However, this is a global phenomenon given the stagnant world economy. According to (https://www.gcis.gov.za/ ), in 2014 the National development plan called for South African's to work in unity in order to reach the goal of reducing unemployment rate to 14% by 2020 and since 2020 was a rough year, the rate took a turn for the worst. Currently, reducing unemployment is one of the government's key priorities. 

Let us stand up and tackle this issue once and for all. Look for ways to get into entrepreneurship and take more risks. Sitting at home hoping for something to come up is not going to help us.