By Lebone Rodah Mosima
The Assembly of the Unemployed and the Cry of the Xcluded have rejected “the politics of division and scapegoating”, saying migrants and foreign nationals are not responsible for South Africa’s unemployment crisis.
In a statement on Thursday, the community groups said the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey – released on Wednesday — painted a devastating picture of deepening social crisis, economic exclusion and mass despair facing millions of working-class and poor people across the country.
The official unemployment rate increased to 32.7%, with the number of unemployed people rising by 301,000 in just one quarter to more than 8.1 million.
Employment declined by 345,000 jobs during the same period, while the number of discouraged work-seekers rose to nearly 3.9 million people.
They said the broader measure of labour underutilisation now stood at 46.3%, exposing the scale of social abandonment and wasted human potential in the
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