2005-11-01,+SAs+burden,+Business+Day+Letters

Business Day, Johannesburg, Letters, 31 October 2005 = SA’s burden =

In, Second fiddle for SA’s poor (October 25), Richard Devey, Caroline Skinner and Imraan Valodia charge state with having “failed” to reduce SA’s unemployment.

According to them, “the acid test of the success of an economy is the degree to which it is able to generate employment…”

Instead of seriously trying to reduce unemployment, government has been dealing with it mainly as a problem of “welfare”.

But is it really possible to reduce SA’s growing unemployment?

The globalised world has, over the past 30 years, been characterised by a change in the balance of power between capital and labour — to capital’s advantage.

In SA this problem is compounded by the serious lack of skills and education characterising so much of the labour force.

As a result of sophisticated technology and competition from foreign labour, local unskilled workers are not required. A policy of welfare is now an obvious alternative.

This article resembles a recent speech by South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande, delivered at the Black Management Forum’s conference.

There is a rapidly-growing conflict within the tripartite alliance, between those who no longer see any inherent contradiction between economic growth and continuing massive unemployment, and those who continue to do so.

Phil Eidelberg Pretoria

From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A107431