Unemployment is a national disaster. Yet the commercialized media seldom reports on unemployment. More than 40% of working age South Africans is now without jobs; their creativity, imagination and energy, vital to the rebuilding of our country, day by day destroyed! 70% of the unemployed are youth and the majority (60%) is women.

 

Unemployment is like a virus – a silent killer infecting our communities with substance abuse, crime, domestic violence and xenophobia. It is destroying our families and is the cause of suicide and many other social ills. For every one person who loses her, or his job as many as 10 dependents lose a source of livelihood.

 

Those who are still working are under constant threat of retrenchments and worsening working conditions. Many work for income that is way below the minimum living wage.

 

The commercialized media sensationalize the symptoms of unemployment and job insecurity – crime, drug abuse, etc. Yet they have little to say about the economic attack on our communities. 

 

For millions without a job it is not just the loss of being able to afford the basic things of life. It is also the loss of dignity. Unemployment turns our communities into places of fear and misery, with violence, abuse and crime our daily reality. When women have jobs they are the most exploited section of the workforce. As caregivers, mothers, and young girls, women also carry the bulk of the unemployment burden.

 

The alternative media should cover the story of unemployment in a way that gives a voice and dignity to the unemployed and those in vulnerable jobs.

 

The commercialized media often portrays unemployment as a individualized problem: If you are unemployed it is because you are unskilled or too lazy to find work. The alternative media must lift the silence and shame associated with unemployment and assist our communities to develop shared responses to unemployment. The alternative media should expose and challenge the real causes of unemployment.

 

 

 

Given the wealth of South Africa, there is no reason why we cannot all enjoy decent work.

 

Unemployment is not a natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake. Unemployment is caused by business owners who want to make more money. The government passes laws to help these bosses make profit letting them invest their money in the stock market or take it overseas, rather than using their money to create jobs for the masses.

 

The South African economy is a built on the export of mainly raw material and the import of high value goods. High levels of inequality were created by the national oppression of black people under colonialism and apartheid. We were never able to develop a big internal market that could support the development of strong local industries able to supply the needs of our people.

 

Government policies including tax cuts for the rich, cuts in public spending, privatisation, free trade policies, and export led growth have not only killed jobs but destroyed decent work and attacked the welfare of the majority.

 

Ministers tell us “the economic fundamentals are sound”, yet South Africa lost over one million jobs in the last year. The government policies may be sound for the rich, but they are a disaster for the poor. Instead of creating decent work, our economy creates mostly low quality and low paid jobs, which people are forced to accept out of desperation.

 

Government and the commercialized media also misrepresent the size of unemployment. They rely on statistics form Stats SA that say 25% of our people are unemployed – but Stats SA count begging for money or food and working in your own house as “employment”. They also exclude people too discouraged to look for work from the number of unemployed. Real unemployment is closer to 40% and as high as 70 % in many communities.

 

Jobs are mostly viewed as something that is easily to get rid of. Businesses and government are constantly looking to cut the number of workers and introduce technology to make more money.

 

Mass unemployment represents a huge waste of South Africa's most important resource – its own people.

 

 

To fight with the destructive unemployment virus we need to change how society values work. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Freedom Charter both call for the Right to Work. The Freedom Charter says: “The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits”.

 

Decent work is a right not a privilege.  Work is what separates humans from other species and is the basis for dignity of people, the social fabric of community and human solidarity. In other words work is life.

 

Just as the South African constitution guarantees the right to life, water, food and other human, social, economic and cultural rights, the right to work should be guaranteed.

 

In parts of India the Government is legally bound to provide work to all those who are able bodied. In Venezuela housewives receive a grant from government for house chores. A government that says it cannot create jobs and that it is not their responsibility to do so, is unfit to govern.