Johannesburg – Earlier this week while trying to digest the alarming unemployment rate of 34.9% announced by the statistician-general, my mind travelled back to my traumatic entry into the job market.
My father found me a school holiday piece-job at 216 Bree Street, Johannesburg, where he himself was employed.
Inside that narrow double-storey building, I met the father I never knew I had until then.
Instead of the assertive man he was among his friends and family at his matchbox house in Soweto, the Obed Maluleke of Bree Street was as meek as a lamb, even in the face of verbal abuse by his white bosses.
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In the homeward bound bus every evening, he would put his Dobbs on and seamlessly transform into the father I knew.
Whenever I tried to discuss the disrespect he endured at work, dad always changed the topic into a session about growing up, finishing school, and getting a job.
Already then, these nuggets of fatherly wisdom were easier said than done. Today’s youth have an even harder time.
Where will one get a job when the economic and educational models in place are not designed to create jobs?
Notably, the unemployment rates of women and men are 37.3% and 32.9%, respectively.
In fact, at 41.5%, the unemployment rate among African women is the highest at this time.
As for my father’s advice about finishing school, one must first get into school in order to finish school.
There are three-and-half million youths – aged 15-24 – who cannot finish school because they are not at school and not in any form of training.
And for a variety of reasons, the most significant of which are economic, those inside the school system struggle to finish school.
If finishing school is hard for many youths, finding a job is even harder.
Those owing tertiary fees may encounter further hurdles in their search for jobs.
In terms of the expanded definition of unemployment, nearly half of the country’s workforce, 46.6%, is unemployed.
Traditional job openings and opportunities have dwindled.
And yet, there is visible evidence of work that needs to be done in the country, especially in the artisan, engineering, public health, education and information and communication technology sectors.
Our water reticulation pipes are old. Sewage is flowing in our streets.
Load-shedding has become as South African as the springbok.
Dangerous and baseless anti-vaccination myths are being peddled vigorously among ordinary South Africans.
Meanwhile, we are always in need of faster, more intelligent and more user-friendly computer and mobile applications to facilitate our access to information, and to key institutions.
If the few viral video clips of councillors and parliamentarians seemingly unable to read being sworn in are anything to go by, there may be a sizeable number of South Africans who can neither read not write.
All these are indications that there is a lot of work to be done. But it is also clear that, for this work to be done, a new set of skills is necessary.
The question is how our private and public sectors may join forces with tertiary institutions to provide training in the skills needed.
The picture of graduates in academic gowns protesting the lack of employment is a familiar one. But there are several things wrong with that picture.
To begin with, having a degree is not the reason they are unemployed.
Nor is it the case that once one has a tertiary qualification, the job market owes one a job.
The numbers are there for all to see: people with a post-matric qualification have a much lower unemployment rate than people with matric and less.
Unlike the general unemployment rate of 34.9%, the current unemployment rate among people with tertiary diplomas and certificates is 7.2% and 2.7% among graduates.
If the unemployment rate is to be reduced, tertiary education will need to be repurposed.
The content and spirit of the education needs to change too so that it produces hustler graduates who can create hitherto unknown job types.
My father’s idea of getting a job and holding it down for a lifetime must be overhauled and replaced with an educational vision that will turn all post-matric certificate, diploma and degree holders into creators of their own jobs.
• Professor Maluleke is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship. Follow him on Twitter @ProfTinyiko
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