Unemployment in South Africa has reached crisis proportions. At 43.7% (including “discouraged job-seekers, who are clearly also unemployed), nobody can deny that we are sitting on a ticking time-bomb. Ignoring it is turning a festering wound into a soon-to-be-amputated limb.
In 1982, Marie Jahoda, a British social scientist, developed the Jahoda Latent Deprivation Model to explain how unemployment affects individuals beyond just financial insecurity. She described unemployment as a serious contributor to mental illness, causing anxiety, stress, purposelessness, depression, shame, guilt and apathy. Employment, she said, meets five essential needs: time structure, social contact, shared goals/collective effort, status/identity and regular activity.
With your job gone, you not only lose income; you also lose these psychological benefits, leading to deprivation and potential mental distress.
This is so true in South Africa, where some unemployed people lose all inhibitions to scratch in bins to earn a living. Marriages and families break up because of a lack of income. The unemployed turn to alcohol and other vices for a temporary reprieve from their daily hardships. Societal problems range from crime, health, mental health, gender-based violence, gangsterism and alcohol and drug abuse, to name but a few.
Youth and women bear the brunt when it comes to unemployment; almost 60% of our youth are unemployed.
The government is responsible
Government policies are mainly the cause of this high unemployment rate, although the legacy of apartheid is also a contributing factor.
Unemployment is a structural problem, and as long as the economy does not grow, unemployment will remain high. Economic growth, however, does not always translate into benefits for the poor and does not always create jobs, because the prime objective of business is profit, not the creation of employment.
Neoliberal policies of the South African government, starting with Gear in 1996, created this roller-coaster ride. The liberalisation of trade that came with Gear flooded our markets with cheap textile imports from China. Capitalists are not patriotic, and the local bunch rushed to bring in the cheap imports, which devastated our local textile industry. Economic growth and huge profits for the commercial sector, but totally destructive for the textile manufacturing sector. The result was factory closures and the loss of thousands of jobs. Capitalists in the textile industry could easily move on, diversify into other industries or find new business opportunities. But for the millions of workers, it is a totally different story.
Neoliberalism is an economic ideology influenced by free-market ideologues such as Milton Friedman. It emphasises free-market principles, deregulation and reduced government intervention in the economy. This is at odds with South Africa as a developing nation. It reinforces the old wealth and financial patterns of colonialism, apartheid and capitalism. Economically, we are held in the stranglehold of the West, which controls trade and the global economy and makes all the rules.
The South African government is forever trying to attract foreign direct investment and put in place policies and programmes that will get multi-national corporations to invest. Like our local capitalists, the multi-national corporations only have an appetite for mega profits, and as we have seen, will desert our economy at the earliest threats to their profit margins. They also want to dictate to our country the terms of their economic engagement.
We have witnessed some multinational car manufacturers relocating to other countries, where they believe they can make bigger profits, and some steel manufacturers, like AccelorMetal, also indicating that they will close soon, putting thousands of jobs at risk, swelling the ranks of the unemployed.
Corruption, mismanagement and government incompetence also play a big role in driving away investment and causing unemployment. All of these factors played a huge role in load shedding and the massive increases in electricity prices, and weakened the rand, putting a premium price on fuel; these are all factors driving up the cost of doing business in South Africa. The higher the cost of doing business, the less appetite businesses have to spend on wages, which they, in many cases, regard as a necessary evil. At the slightest provocation or opportunity, they will offload their workforce.
Unemployment destroys society
Stats SA’s Social Profile of South African Youth 2014-2024 flags poverty, crime, education and the labour market as key issues shaping youth in South Africa. It identifies youth unemployment as a major driver of crime among youth, decrying the fact that only 27.7% of youth are employed. The Western Cape, KZN and Eastern Cape, regarded as youth-heavy provinces with high unemployment rates, also have high murder rates and violent crimes. The Eastern Cape had a murder rate of 63.5, the Western Cape 61.1 and KZN 52.2 murders per 100,000 in 2023. Over 55,000 youths, aged 14 -25, are imprisoned in South Africa: 9,000 for economic crimes and 16,000 for aggressive, violent crimes.
Deploying the army is only a stopgap solution, and, in our experience, the problem will persist once the army is withdrawn.
Unemployment and poverty contribute heavily to health issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and other lifestyle diseases. The World Health Organisation (WHO) emphasises that these diseases (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases) are largely preventable through modifications in diet, physical activity, and reduction of tobacco and alcohol.
Many of these diseases are preventable, and the government is spending a lot of money on treating the symptoms, not the diseases itself. We know the cause of these diseases is not eating properly, not exercising, and substance abuse. We also know the root of these diseases lies in poverty, unemployment, access to proper programmes and tools, and lack of knowledge. If the government is prepared to properly tackle these issues, it can massively reduce its budget of R82.6 billion over the next three years for drugs for treating non-communicable diseases.
Poor and unemployed people have to buy the less nutritious R15 loaf of bread, rather than the R30 and R40 healthier variants. Poor people cannot afford the gym, and do not have the inclination to exercise, considering their heavy burdens. And because of such burdens, they are also more likely to engage in substance abuse like smoking and drinking, and more dangerous substances.
The poor and unemployed do not have the budget or tools for healthy diets and lifestyles.
The government must stop austerity measures that push more and more people into the ranks of the unemployed and onto the margins of poverty.
Revise the EPWP
The government must have a deep dive assessment of all EPWP programmes and overhaul or abolish them. At the moment, they keep our people, including the youth, in bondage and perpetual slavery, working for slave wages. They get paid below the minimum wage and are not covered under the LRA and BCEA. In very few instances do they train our youth in new skills to empower them to find work.
Every year between 570,000 and 650,000 youth matriculate, 572,983 in 2023, 614,562 in 2024, and 650,000 in 2025. Those are only the ones who passed, because in 2025, 900 000 learners wrote the matric exams. And these numbers do not include the many dropouts in primary and high school every year.
And did the almost two million learners who registered for matric between 2023 and 2025 find work? Work has to be found for them, but can our economy cope with such a high demand for jobs? How do we do this, year after year?
Declare an emergency
The government has to admit that it has a massive problem of unemployment on its hands and declare unemployment a national emergency.
An unemployment rate above 40% is definitely a national crisis, and should be treated by the government as such. Unemployment should stop being marginalised and be regarded as an important economic indicator, a labour market state that signals dysfunction and inefficiency. It should be treated as a socio-economic condition in need of urgent attention.
The government should partner with the organisations of the unemployed to find a solution to the unemployment crisis: organisations like B2WC, Assembly of the Unemployed, Botshabelo Unemployed Movement and the Unemployed People’s Movement, as well as trade union federations like Cosatu and Saftu. They should partner to develop programmes to continuously create permanent, decent and dignified employment.
Let’s work together to make it our mission for future generations to not know the word or meaning of unemployment.
Moegsien Ismail is the Media Officer of Back To Work Campaign (B2WC), an unemployed workers’ organisation, organising the Unemployed in the broader Cape Town Metropolitan area, and a member of the Assembly of the Unemployed (AOU). B2WC especially advocates for the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) to be abolished or reformed, and not to be used by the City of Cape Town as a wage-bill cost-cutting exercise.