Johnathan Paoli
Democratic Alliance (DA) federal leader John Steenhuisen has called out the Congress of SA Trade Unions (COSATU) as the “scene of the crime” of the unemployment crisis in South Africa.
Steenhuisen delivered a speech outside COSATU House in Braamfontein, Johannesburg on Thursday and said the impact of the growing unemployment rate is alarming.
“The almost 30 years in which the Unholy Alliance between COSATU, the ANC, and the SACP has governed South Africa, has caused record unemployment, and brought misery upon millions of citizens robbed of the dignity of a job and the ability to provide for their families,” the leader said.
Steenhuisen said COSATU has proven itself not to be on the side of the people, but rather the ruling party’s cadres and elites, which has twisted and contorted the South African economy, creating an exclusive, sluggish and uncompetitive economy where the workers have been squeezed out and have no access to opportunities to build a life for themselves.
“It is an organisation that has continually and systemically worked against the South African worker, acting as a choke-hold on our economy, and a boot against the neck of job-seeking citizens,” he said.
His response follows a back and forth between the DA and ANC-allied organisations which have criticized the Blue Army’s economic policies, especially their calls for the phasing out of the basic minimum wage.
Steenhuisen said the DA’s economic policy recognised the need for a minimum wage to ensure the adequate remuneration of skilled workers, but also understood that targeted exemption from it was crucial to developing the economy and lifting millions of citizens out of poverty.
He said instead of creating jobs for South Africans, the minimum wage forces businesses to banish job-seekers to a life of poverty, instead of allowing them to earn the money that a business could afford to pay, and that the country needed a system that both protects workers but also encourages economic development.
“The Unholy Alliance talks about the minimum wage as if it is the best way of addressing unemployment, but in the South African context, the inflexible minimum wage only acts as a barrier to increased hiring by businesses,” the leader said.
Steenhuisen introduced the Youth Employment Opportunity Certificate, which would allow holders the choice to opt out of the national minimum wage and enable unemployed youth to gain work experience and earn a wage rather than being reliant upon a social grant.
He said that currently employed workers would be protected by leaving the wage at its current level, in order to prevent a decline in wages, while allowing more unemployed persons to “progressively gain a foothold on the employment ladder”.
This initiative would work in conjunction with the outlawing of cadre deployment, the building of a capable public service, eliminating export tariffs and opening up state entities such as Transnet and Eskom to private investment, he said.
Over the weekend, COSATU acting National Spokesperson Matthew Parks lashed out at the DA and said it was attempting to cancel important labour rights that generations of workers struggled to achieve from the dark days of apartheid, when the DA’s predecessors sat meekly in Parliament, to post-1994 when the DA voted against legislation improving the working conditions and rights of workers.
“The callousness of the DA’s economic illiteracy which pedals the myth that paying workers peanuts and denying them an increase to keep pace with inflation is a recipe for galloping economic growth rates and jobs galore is exposed by anyone who experienced the slave wages of the apartheid era,” charged Parks.
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, said the high unemployment was threatening the country’s democracy, blaming it on the government’s increasing failures.
“You can’t have 42% of people unemployed, that’s a recipe for an implosion. You can’t have 8.7 million young people unemployed and you can’t have a crisis affecting black people who are promised a better life in 1994,” Vavi said.
INSIDE POLITICS
