After three decades of ANC misgovernance and a year with the ANC as the largest party in the “government of neoliberal unity”, SA has the world’s second-highest unemployment rate after Eswatini.
During the second quarter of 2025 there were 12.6-million unemployed people, including 1.1-million graduates without work, according to Stats SA. There were unemployment rates of 42.9% for people of all races, 71.7% for youth and 51.4% for African women. During the first year of the government of national unity (GNU), the labour force increased by 419,000 people but the economy created only 155,000 jobs.
Formal employment declined by 3,000, and 54,000 people lost their jobs in private households. But 197,000 new entrants into the labour force decided to try their luck in the informal sector, where most people earn poverty wages. The number of unemployed people increased by 265,000.
The GNU has been an epic fail for the economy, and the two largest parties in the coalition do not have credible plans to confront the jobs crisis. The ANC emerged from a national executive committee meeting and said nothing about what it would do to address the crisis. The DA’s latest plan demonstrates economic illiteracy on steroids. The party has used fake statistics — that R1-trillion has been transferred to 100 politically connected people — to say that BEE must be scrapped.
The reality is that companies have not implemented employment equity. White males — 3.5% of the population — account for 51% of people in top management in the private sector. Companies hire when there are new customers or there is more demand in the economy. Scrapping a policy that has not been implemented will not create new customers or jobs.
I cannot understand what is so difficult about growing the economy and reducing the number of unemployed people, and why government has failed to do so for so long. From the fourth quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2025 the labour force increased by 8.7-million. But the economy created only 1.2-million formal jobs. The number of unemployed people soared by 6.7-million.
At the weekend government convened a national convention to plan for a national dialogue that is intended to develop a social compact for the economy. Five political parties that accounted for 48.5% of the people who voted in the 2024 elections boycotted the convention. The event was in effect an ANC dialogue with itself and a few so-called representatives of civil society.
Big business does not want a dialogue because it has a speed dial to the presidency and has captured economic policy. With the ANC’s dominant neoliberal faction and the DA, they have no interest in a real dialogue that will result in a major change of economic policy if it is done properly. For the ANC the optics of a dialogue that has nonstop criticism of the government and its president’s dismal economic record during an election year will not be good.
Government blue-ticked the macroeconomic targets of the National Development Plan (NDP), which included the creation of 11-million jobs and the achievement of an unemployment rate of 6% by 2030. The National Treasury cares only about a 2% primary budget surplus. The Reserve Bank cares only about achieving a 3% inflation target. The two most important institutions in the economy do not care about jobs and no-one is responsible for addressing the unemployment crisis.
If government ignored the NDP and does not want to solve a jobs crisis that it created, why should we believe that it will implement the recommendations of a national dialogue? SA needs a revolution, not a dialogue.
• Gqubule is an adviser on economic development and transformation.
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