South Africa: Jobless rate rises again

I must admit that I got a bit of a fright when I saw that South Africa's new unemployment rate is a healthy 25%! I'm used to Australia's 5% so 25% seems a tad high - even for a country run by incompetent liberation tools. During Jacob Zuma's first state of the nation address in June 2009, he promised to create 500,000 jobs by the end of that year, and four million by 2014!  I see he's on track then with the new, improved unemployment figures - up 1% from last quarter (maybe he meant these jobs were in China?). During his inauguration speech he described his inauguration as a "moment of renewal" for South Africa, and vowed to work for reconciliation. Apart from the new white elephant soccer stadiums - which cost the White tax payer $1.5 billion - I really don't see any other 'renewal' that he promised. The next state of the nation speech would be quite easy to write - I'll take a stab:

Dear Comrades, our country is f#cked - let's party! Where are the cows to slaughter? Where is my new wife? Where are my 20 childrens? Hau!

You see dear folks, with 25% of adult South Africans unemployed, there really is going to come a time when the masses will get a bit antsy. All they can see is their food bills rising, the infrastructure crumbling, the police force killing citizens willy-nilly, petrol rising, and their ANC politicians getter fatter and fatter and stealing taking more and more from their wallets. Wouldn't you be a bit upset? What would be the ANCs response you wonder? Why, it's the White man's fault. Look, he still lives in houses, he still drives fancy cars, he still owns the successful companies and he still hates Blacks. Get rid of him and all your troubles will be over. Please don't look at how us ANC liberation fighters live and party. We are the oppressed and we deserve this. In any case, good luck to South Africa. To fight 25% unemployment is going to be extremely difficult and when you have an incompetent government to boot then you're really in trouble. Another African success story. Hey, but at least the Blacks are free!

Ps. Can anyone tell me what 'discouraged work-seekers' are?  

Johannesburg - The unemployment rate increased by 1% to 25% between the fourth quarter of 2010 and first quarter in 2011, Statistics SA said on Tuesday.

"The unemployment rate increased by one percentage point between Q4: 2010 (24%) and Q1: 2011 (25%)." Stats SA said in its labour force survey for the first quarter of 2011.

There was an increase of 3.4% (or 486 000) in the number of persons not economically active. Of these 353 000 were discouraged work-seekers.

The agency said the number of unemployed people increased by 227 000 between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. During the same period, the number of discouraged work-seekers increased by 73 000.

In this time, the number of people in the labour force increased by 213 000.

The formal sector gained 56 000 jobs and the informal sector lost 46 000 jobs in this quarter. Agriculture lost 24 000 jobs and employment in private households remained almost unchanged.

Source