Auto Express Magazine: South Africa: Jobs galore and money for jam

In case anyone missed it, the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, recently promised that he will be creating five million jobs in the next decade - that's 500 000 jobs per year for 10 years (I smell an election coming on). Now, I suppose we shouldn't be doubting this esteemed man - he of the "bring me my machine gun" song - but in case he's forgotten, in 2009 he promised to create 500 000 jobs by the end of that year and add 4million jobs by 2014. Well, let's see how well that worked out. Another one million jobs were lost last year! Yup, that's the track record of this Marxist, communist ANC government. The author of the commentary below shows just what a poor track record they have on running a once self-sufficient nation. What the author doesn't mention is that since 2000, another 5 million people have been added to the population as well as another +3 million Zimbabwean citizens (that figure could be as high as 8 million as no one really knows the exact number). Crime is on the increase - 109 people died violently PER DAY in South Africa between April 2009-April 2010 - that's 39 004 people murdered during that period (including 110 policemen). In comparison, just over 10 000 people died in Afghanistan in the last year. Instead of treasuring the hard-working farmers they are systematically being murdered and wiped out by these Black thugs - all sanctioned by the ANC government. Yeah right Mr Zuma - I believe every word you say although I suspect thousands don't. But, never mind, every time your sheeple start getting restless just mention "kill the Boer" or "Apartheid" and they'll vote for you again and again with no questions asked.

President Jacob Zuma - this man is running South Africa!

As Jacob Zuma, his Cabinet and other wise sages sit down to contemplate how to recreate the jobs they have destroyed in pursuit of their leftist doctrine, and how to use an even more extreme and malevolent form of these doctrines to create in excess of 500 000 jobs every year (remember Zuma promised five million jobs and seven percent growth a few months ago at the NGC).

To that effect, Gwede Mantashe just leaked the good news; 35 000 of those jobs needed; all of 7%, will be created in manufacturing and he stressed that the commitment to the five million jobs in the next 10 years still stands. So as we are still struggling to find the jobs that disappeared when Jacob Zuma last promised jobs, they are creating the next wave of promises.

Digesting Gwede’s very good news and not wanting to be negative, one still cannot help wondering what has changed since the last promise. Perhaps one should go back 13-14 years and see how the slow migration to the political and economic left has benefitted the economy and specifically jobs. One wonders if the further liberalisation of labour laws, already more liberal than most countries in the world, and laws aimed at transferring land willy-nilly, possibly even in true Zimbabwean fashion, will create jobs.

Throughout the history of South Africa the detested economic sectors, mining, agriculture and domestic work have been significant sources of employment. This very sector has been targeted more than any other sector for reform. Labour laws, as they became more liberal and more focussed on the desires of people to do as little work as possible for as much money as possible, these labour intensive sectors shed more and more jobs. Mines closed down or mechanised, farmers mechanised and madams bought dishwashers. As laws were passed, threatening farmers, they left. In some cases they handed their model farms over to black farmers who, as in Zimbabwe turned the model farms into wastelands, destroying thousands of jobs in the process.

The perceptions of an Afro-pessimist? I’m afraid not.

In 1997, the mining industry, excluding manufacturing and other services depending on mining, employed 547 000 people. By 2 000 this number was down to 431 000 and by 2010 the industry supported only 301 000 jobs. The ANC left leaning policies have destroyed 246 000 jobs and the people who once held those jobs no longer had to work so hard; come to think of it; most of them ended up doing no jobs at all; they were free to do as they pleased; they did not have much money for food; that has to be said but at least they could procreate at their hearts content.

The loss of jobs in the mining industry unfortunately does not tell the full story, there is worse to come. In 2001 South Africa’s revenue from minerals were R419 billion. By 2010 this number was up to R491 billion, an annual growth of 1.9% per year. An increase some would joyfully acclaim. Unfortunately this scribe must pee on the fires of joy and celebration. If the South African mining industry had produced exactly the same volume of minerals in 2010 as they did in 2001, because of the huge increase in resource prices, the value of the mineral sales would’ve been a staggering R2 161 billion; money that could’ve been used to build new mines and create thousands of new job opportunities. As it is; mining employees, despite the demise of their industry, have seen their salaries increased a whopping 28% in real terms and 200% in nominal terms in the last ten years, not because of their hard work and ingenuity but because of the liberalisation of laws by the ANC.

Obviously it is not only the labour laws that are impeding development and growth in the mining industry. Foreign investors, not only afraid of the rampant labour laws, but also the scared by lawlessness and insecurity brought about by the regulatory environment which makes tenure precarious at best and makes the blatant theft of minerals rights a daily occurrence, are moving their investments to less risky ventures in countries such as the DRC and Mauritania.

In the agriculture sector things are looking much the same. The sector which employed 1.2 million people in 1997 are now employing only 660 000. Six hundred thousand jobs were lost due to mechanisation and the redistribution of land. Farmers are fully aware of the realities of South Africa. They know very well a machine cannot take them to the CCMA, it cannot encroach on their property and it certainly cannot wilfully murder them. Farmers on the land realise that the objectives of the left leaning government and African Nationalists is not to redistribute land; it is to drive the hated white farmer of the land.

There are huge tracts of good agricultural land lying waste throughout the country; land belonging to the government and municipalities - land that can be given to potential new black farmers. Unfortunately that does not fit in with the ANC's s social and transformation blue print nor the the Econonomic growth plan but it goes a long way in proving the contention that this is not about jobs and land but more than likely all about the continuing presence of pesky white farmers.

The South African Communist Party has long maintained that domestic work and gardening is demeaning. This does not prevent Blade Nzimandi and his comrades from staying in five star hotels where servants, like domestic servants all over the country, have to scrub their pubes and dirt out of baths and showers. So while Nzimandi and friends are demeaning these worthless jobs when they sing; “My father was a gardener and my mother was a kitchen girl that is why I’m a communist” we have to discover, to our horror that of the 1.3million domestic jobs in 2000 only 1.15 million remains today. Rather than paying these people minimum salaries prescribed by the labour laws, families have decided to get by without all of 150 000 of them. After all, who wants to employ people who endlessly demand more for doing less? Who wants to employ people who quite happily participate in the murder of your baby and then have the audacity to take you to the CCMA for unfair dismissal only for no other reason that the law allows them to.

How do they expect to create jobs when the few investors, like “Massmart”, still willing to create jobs are threatened by workers too lazy to work? How do they expect to create jobs by destroying a major employer of for cyclical business, the labour broker?

The glamour industries; banking and financial services have grown in the past number of years on the back of the need to establish access to Africa. This has helped South Africa from showing even more job losses and more dismal economic growth. However, that sector is now saturated, very apparent from the mass retrenchments by Standard Bank.

Perhaps Zuma and his cohorts believe the Chinese will come to their rescue. Perhaps the solution lies in even higher death rates; a further decrease in life expectancy and a higher rate of infant mortality.