Trust the DA to play the man and not the ball
Trust the DA to play the man and not the ball. Or is the response [by DA Deputy Shadow Minister in the Presidency Michael Cardo] that goes at length talking about the deputy minister's political persuasion a signal of empty cans making lots of noise?
The report of the Statistician General entitled Youth Employment, unemployment skills and economic growth 1994 - 2014 shows that Africans are largely represented in unskilled jobs. This is largely an apartheid legacy. White people largely because of their economic prowess (White households still earn on average six times African households) and apartheid spatial planning attend schools that will deliver better results. In addition parents are able to assist with homework and or can hire additional help. So it really is not rocket science that white people will continue to acquire skills.
The deputy minister had explained that skilled employment will be a function of demand as well as supply. There are many factors at play in relation to the demand side of the job equation. That is the reason why we experience more Africans graduate unemployed compared to White graduates. The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Graduate Pathways Survey tracked the 2000-2002 cohort of leavers and graduates from 7 selected Higher Education Institutions in South Africa into their final labour market destinations. The following results came through:
White graduates experienced much lower overall unemployment rates at 9% than Africans graduates at 41%; the unemployment rate of Africans from Historically white universities is 42% compared to that of Whites at 10%. The survey also shows that African unemployment rates are significantly higher than White rates irrespective of field of study.
So this too could contribute to white people showing higher levels of employment composition as skilled. I am yet to be convinced that conclusion that black youths between the ages of 25 and 34 "lost out in acquiring skills through the 20-year period and that is the crux of the issue of youth unemployment" is true. How can this be true when the share of African youth aged 15 to 34 with a post-secondary degree was 2% in 1996 and 7% in 2011. Moreover, the share with matric climbed from 15% in 1996 to 30% in 2011 in this cohort.
Having said all the above, the Democratic Alliance must also understand that youth unemployment is a global phenomenon. The ILO estimated last year that 73.4 million young people who want to work and are actively looking for a job cannot find one. This figure naturally excludes those who are in further or higher education institutions. Some countries are worse affected than others.
For example Spain's level of unemployment for the under 25 reached 56.1% in 2013. South Africa is no different. The youth (adults aged between 18 and 29) according to a 2011 National Treasury report experience an unemployment rate that is more than double that of the overall population unemployment rate, and about two-thirds of unemployed youth have never had a job (National Treasury, 2011).
There are many reasons for this, but the youth are particularly affected because in a job scarce environment, employers are not hiring youth since young people are inexperienced; their productivity is not yet proven. Employers use levels of education and work experience to "measure" potential productivity.
I fully appreciate that skills become important because throughout the world economies are becoming skills biased and skilled labour is replacing semi-skilled labour; which is why the democratic government must work even harder to eradicate the shadow of Bantu education that bequeathed to the majority poor quality education (curriculum and infrastructure).
The tragedy is that because of Bantu education the teachers that are to drive the skills acquisition project they themselves need to be upskilled. Fortunately there are many programmes that aim at facilitating the upskilling of teachers.
To come now to the youth wage subsidy, a favourite of the DA. Unlike the DA the ANC does believe in listening to voices of everyone hence the championing of social dialogue and social dialogue institutions such as NEDLAC.
It was indeed important to ensure that when the youth wage subsidy is implemented in whatever form; all possible unintended consequences as articulated by social partners are minimised.
For a wage subsidy these could include firms hiring young people they would have hired anyway, firms firing young people as soon as they no longer qualify for the subsidy and hiring new ones; or firms firing older workers and hiring younger workers so as to benefit from the youth subsidy.
Because government listened, the initiative introduced in January 2014 has safe guards against such and hopefully when it is reviewed it will be deemed effective.
Even though it pains me to say this I together with many others wonder how the SG could scientifically claim to compare surveys conducted before the 1996 census with surveys conducted post the 1996 census. It is more than an issue of definition but it is just a fact that pre 1994 the African population was never counted but was rather estimated using a variety of methods.
To make an example the 1980 census enumerators were given outdated maps that did not take into account the development of informal settlements and backyard dwellers as the influx control measures collapsed. Only one household was interviewed if there were several living at a particular "visiting point" (dwelling).
Households were selected proportional to their size and there is no traceable "upweighting" of the smaller households to compensate. In addition apartheid generated violence made counting impossible. For the 1991 census, large parts of the country excluded from the demarcation process (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei and the rural areas of the self-governing territories).
This then means the first relatively accurate measurement of the population would be at the 1996 census. So how then does the SG compare the surveys when the numerators for the African population could not be accurate pre 1994, how are the sample weights to reflect reality such that the survey can then be generalised to the whole population if the total number is an estimate?
Other researchers such as Branson and Wittenberg have even argued that between the various October household surveys and the quarterly labour force surveys there are breaks in the way in which survey weights were constructed and that this can lead to jumps in a series which are unrelated to "real" changes.
In addition the 1994 October Household survey did not cover mining employment well. This will obviously impact on the representation of low earning categories of work. Kerr and Wittenberg (2013) argue that the OHSs up to 1998 significantly under counted backyard shacks and small households.
This led to the under counting of certain categories of employed people, probably disproportionately low earners (such as domestic workers). This will then give the impression that proportionately African people had higher skills levels per 1994 if the lower skilled jobs are absent from the equation.
In conclusion, the DA always talks about quality of education. They must remember that the last time the Western Cape education department beat all provinces in the matric results was when the ANC was in power. And not it is not because of migrants; Gauteng has received the largest number of migrants between the censuses; more than 3 times the number of Western Cape.
I could continue, but to tell the truth the response of the shadow minister is really not even worth being responded to.
Alex Mdakane is the YCLSA Linda Jabane District Secretary.
This article first appeared in the League's online journal the Bottomline, Issue 15, Vol 11: 9 October 2014
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