Economic freedom drives economic growth. And it is economic growth – not populism – that will help reduce unemployment and gradually begin to turn things around.
Outstanding breakdown of how populism substitues real policy solutions with convenient scapegoating. The JSEC proposal is genuinely insightful becasue it reframes the entire debate around choice rather than protection. When you mentionthat many immigrants are self-employed, thats the kernel of the whole problem: locals face regulatory barriers that immigrants bypass out of necessity. If South Africa could replicate that for its own citizens through structured exemptions, the competitive landscape would shift immediately without needing deportations or job reservations at all.
I fully concur with you on the rise of populism in South Africa and the dangers it brings. I especially agree about Herman Mashaba, who has become unhinged on Twitter (X).
I disagree with the solutions you suggest for tackling unemployment, especially your endorsement of the FMF report. The report is laughably outrageous and raises more questions than it answers. Giving up legislated protections is never a solution.
You claim, as the report does, that after 24 months these now-experienced young people move into permanent employment. Where does this supposedly “magical” employment come from? The report doesn’t answer that.
And since these recruits would be placed in low-skilled service jobs that require little to no training, what stops employers from letting them go after 24 months of low wages and replacing them with a new batch of unprotected, low-wage workers? The only fix would be legislation to prevent that, which puts us right back where we started.
If you actually take the time to read the whole report and not just my article, which cites it in passing, you'll realise that it's targeted at a specific group of young people in the country who have been failed by public education. They're either undereducated or uneducated, and they thus fall into the low-skill labour category.
If you accept that there's a relationship between human capital and wages, and that the logic of demand and supply also applies to labour (which you clearly don't based on your response), then you naturally have no qualms with low-wage work in this instance. We have an oversupply of low-skilled labour in the country and this is just the reality.
You can moralise about labour protections and all, and allude to "exploitation", but the fact of the matter is that those protections are the impediment in this case. The minimum wage is arbitrary and it restricts the market from setting wages in line with the factors I've already mentioned. Insist on it and employers in the country will keep hiring immigrants for low-skilled work, to the detriment of the young people in question. Scrap it and the situation will improve, and even the capital that continues to be hoarded by domestic investors (particularly) will begin to flow to where it should.
Zakes isn't naive, and he understands that the labour regime in SA cannot be dismantled, at least not anytime soon. Unions and other stakeholders have a vested interest, so that pathway has limited prospects of success. JSEC is important because it restores freedom and agency to individuals; agency that they currently do not have because of the existing labour regime, which says they can only do work that pays them above a certain floor amount.
It goes without saying that there are people who want to work, even for those "slave wages". They want to exercise their agency and negotiate their own economic futures. JSEC allows them to do that. It allows them to opt out of a labour regime that continues to condemn them to unemployment and misery. The state should not decide for people on the basis of some arbitrary wage; they should be allowed to opt out of the country's labour regime.
The last point about "magical" employment is a deliberate strawman; Zakes and I never mention it anywhere. The goal here is to absorb as many people as possible into the labour force during that period so they can gain experience and expand their skills base, and hopefully set themselves up for other opportunities in future, whether through employment or self-employment. JSEC is not about central planning or trying to instantly and "magically" resolve an unemployment crisis that has been largely engineered by public education.
It's an intervention that is, at best, meant to mitigate the pernicious effects of structural unemployment by giving people some skin in the game and allowing them to earn however little while they are in the labour market. Push for substantive labour reform in SA and then maybe we can talk about "magical" employment - or rather mass employment with a bit more sustainability - when real investment flows in. For now, allow people to opt out of labour laws and actually step into the labour market, at the very least, even though sustainability remains questionable.
Failing which, deride market- based solutions and entertain grand promises of state-led industrialisation or modern monetary theory, which suggests that we can somehow achieve full employment through state programmes and all. But understand that even this raises the same questions, especially given the financial health of the SA state. Aside from this, there are many other issues associated with MMT and state-led industrialisation in our context, which I won't go into here.
Outstanding breakdown of how populism substitues real policy solutions with convenient scapegoating. The JSEC proposal is genuinely insightful becasue it reframes the entire debate around choice rather than protection. When you mentionthat many immigrants are self-employed, thats the kernel of the whole problem: locals face regulatory barriers that immigrants bypass out of necessity. If South Africa could replicate that for its own citizens through structured exemptions, the competitive landscape would shift immediately without needing deportations or job reservations at all.
I wrote a longer response engaging with your argument on the JSEC and labour deregulation here, in the spirit of extending the debate.
https://substack.com/@phumulani11/note/p-187057923?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=7dlzo4
I fully concur with you on the rise of populism in South Africa and the dangers it brings. I especially agree about Herman Mashaba, who has become unhinged on Twitter (X).
I disagree with the solutions you suggest for tackling unemployment, especially your endorsement of the FMF report. The report is laughably outrageous and raises more questions than it answers. Giving up legislated protections is never a solution.
You claim, as the report does, that after 24 months these now-experienced young people move into permanent employment. Where does this supposedly “magical” employment come from? The report doesn’t answer that.
And since these recruits would be placed in low-skilled service jobs that require little to no training, what stops employers from letting them go after 24 months of low wages and replacing them with a new batch of unprotected, low-wage workers? The only fix would be legislation to prevent that, which puts us right back where we started.
If you actually take the time to read the whole report and not just my article, which cites it in passing, you'll realise that it's targeted at a specific group of young people in the country who have been failed by public education. They're either undereducated or uneducated, and they thus fall into the low-skill labour category.
If you accept that there's a relationship between human capital and wages, and that the logic of demand and supply also applies to labour (which you clearly don't based on your response), then you naturally have no qualms with low-wage work in this instance. We have an oversupply of low-skilled labour in the country and this is just the reality.
You can moralise about labour protections and all, and allude to "exploitation", but the fact of the matter is that those protections are the impediment in this case. The minimum wage is arbitrary and it restricts the market from setting wages in line with the factors I've already mentioned. Insist on it and employers in the country will keep hiring immigrants for low-skilled work, to the detriment of the young people in question. Scrap it and the situation will improve, and even the capital that continues to be hoarded by domestic investors (particularly) will begin to flow to where it should.
Zakes isn't naive, and he understands that the labour regime in SA cannot be dismantled, at least not anytime soon. Unions and other stakeholders have a vested interest, so that pathway has limited prospects of success. JSEC is important because it restores freedom and agency to individuals; agency that they currently do not have because of the existing labour regime, which says they can only do work that pays them above a certain floor amount.
It goes without saying that there are people who want to work, even for those "slave wages". They want to exercise their agency and negotiate their own economic futures. JSEC allows them to do that. It allows them to opt out of a labour regime that continues to condemn them to unemployment and misery. The state should not decide for people on the basis of some arbitrary wage; they should be allowed to opt out of the country's labour regime.
The last point about "magical" employment is a deliberate strawman; Zakes and I never mention it anywhere. The goal here is to absorb as many people as possible into the labour force during that period so they can gain experience and expand their skills base, and hopefully set themselves up for other opportunities in future, whether through employment or self-employment. JSEC is not about central planning or trying to instantly and "magically" resolve an unemployment crisis that has been largely engineered by public education.
It's an intervention that is, at best, meant to mitigate the pernicious effects of structural unemployment by giving people some skin in the game and allowing them to earn however little while they are in the labour market. Push for substantive labour reform in SA and then maybe we can talk about "magical" employment - or rather mass employment with a bit more sustainability - when real investment flows in. For now, allow people to opt out of labour laws and actually step into the labour market, at the very least, even though sustainability remains questionable.
Failing which, deride market- based solutions and entertain grand promises of state-led industrialisation or modern monetary theory, which suggests that we can somehow achieve full employment through state programmes and all. But understand that even this raises the same questions, especially given the financial health of the SA state. Aside from this, there are many other issues associated with MMT and state-led industrialisation in our context, which I won't go into here.