Unemployment a 'post-apartheid phenomenon' in SA.

This is an abridged version of an article from Business Live:

SA's unemployment rate rose from about 7% in the mid-1970s to 13% in the mid-1990s and 25% in the late 2000s.

 "To the South African government this is an inconvenient fact, since it implies that current high levels of unemployment are largely a post-apartheid phenomenon and not, as many officials and academics would prefer it, a legacy of apartheid," recruitment company Adcorp said on Monday as it released its employment index for June.  

Adcorp said the acceptance that unemployment had current rather than historical causes was the necessary first step in fixing the problem. 

"So long as we cite historical causes, we live in a fantasy world where unemployment can only be addressed when the legacy of apartheid itself is finally addressed.

Turning to the question of whether or not unemployment in SA could be fixed, the company said this would largely entail (a) unravelling the post-1994 changes that have caused the unemployment rate to nearly double over that period; and (b) bringing millions of informally employed people into the formal sector.

"This essentially requires revising two areas of the Labour Relations Act of 1995, namely collective bargaining procedures and protections against dismissal."

According to the World Economic Forum... SA's labour laws and regulations ranked 133rd (the seventh lowest) among 139 countries in the world, particularly in three areas: hiring and firing practices (135th), conflict in employer-employee relations (132nd) and flexibility of the wage-determination process (131st). 

All three areas were governed by the Labour Relations Act, Adcorp said.

Apartheid was regarded as a capitalist system designed to suppress wages and working conditions for black South Africans.

"As the Free Market Foundation argues, apartheid was neither capitalist nor market-oriented, nonetheless, labour market reform - more so than the Constitution itself (which was introduced only later, in 1996) - was an overriding objective of the new coalition government."

However, the industrial peace to which the Labour Relations Act aspired failed to materialise, Adcorp said.

"In 2010 there were more working days lost due to strikes and work stoppages than at the peak of 'rolling mass-action' under apartheid.

"....SA will lose 24.9 million days due to strikes and work stoppages in 2011 - an increase of 22% over 2010."

"As the World Economic Forum notes in its 2010 Global Competitiveness Report, SA has the eighth-highest level of industrial conflict in the world - despite having, in the South African government's view, some of the world's most progressive labour legislation."

Adcorp contended that the Labour Relations Act had moved SA backwards rather than forwards.

"Firstly, dismissal protections - which make it exceedingly difficult to fire workers who fail to perform or even to show up for work - have made falling labour productivity an endemic rather than occasional or isolated problem.

"...SA's hiring and firing practices rank the fifth-worst in the world."

Secondly, the collective bargaining process - which gave significant power to trade unions and bargaining councils - had allowed two-digit wage escalations to co-exist with falling labour productivity.

"...SA's wage determination process is the ninth-most inflexible in the world. The inability to get workers to perform, and the inability to pay them for their performance, are the single biggest drivers of low employment, which in turn is the primary cause of high unemployment."

As a result, big and small employers alike were considering how to mechanise, automate and generally do away with labour: the labour intensity of production for SA as a whole had fallen by 16% since 1994.

Employment had dropped sharply at an annual rate of 8.3% during June, the second consecutive monthly decline.

This represented a loss of 127,100 permanent positions and 5,712 temporary positions.

The 1992 Referendum.

In 1992 white people in South Africa took part in a referendum.

The question was whether they were happy with the negotiations President F.W de Klerk and his government had entered into with the ANC, in order to negotiate a peaceful transition of power and a new constitution.

The overwhelming majority of whites voted 'YES', almost 70%.

If there was a 'NO' vote, F.W de Klerk stated he would resign as President and negotiations would end.
Even though Apartheid ended in 1991, this would mean that white-majority rule would continue.
The majority of whites voluntarily voted against this option.

"This is the true birthday of a new South Africa…today we have closed the book on Apartheid," FW de Klerk, 18 March 1992.

But strangely enough this little detail seems to be omitted when mentioning the ending of Apartheid.
Since this was the pivotal moment which ended it.

F.W de Klerk has stated in his autobiography that Apartheid still had every means of continuing.
According to him, the township riots and ANC terrorism had not been a factor in his decision, nor had international sanctions.

His reasoning for deciding to hand over power was that the Soviet Union had collapsed and as a result the ANC and Communist Party would no longer have the financial and military support to create a Socialist or Communist regime.

He has since said in an interview that if he had not made the initiative to negotiate, then the system would probably still be in place today.

The reason the 1992 referendum is somehow never mentioned is because it doesn't fit into the story and myth the international community and the ANC supporters had quite hoped for.
A voluntarily handing-over of power gives little credit to local resistance and is not as dramatic a story to cover in popular media and repeat in history lessons.

Instead, the chosen tale is one where an army of liberation fighters waged a war against the government, bringing it to it's knees and forcing it to 'surrender'.

For the international media, the story of having South African whites being responsible for ending Apartheid is simply not acceptable and wasn't supposed to be part of the script.

But today, the ANC cannot even admit to having waged a 'war' against the government, instead they have to settle with the word 'struggle'.

The myth of how Apartheid ended goes perfectly with the Myth of the Rainbow nation.
Today, it does not exist, but it keeps the conscience of the international media and the world at peace.

South Africa is now a violent country divided by race and racial paranoia and where hate speech is openly preached by the government against whites.
For them to admit that they have supported a transition to a lawless and corrupt racist society, which now stands as the murder and rape capital of the world would be to admit they were wrong.

White people are now rated by Genocide Watch as being listed a 6 out of 8 on the Genocide scale.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

The world got what they wanted.
The brief images of Mandela wearing the green Springbok jersey in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, surrounded by a stadium of all races genuinely cheering him on and optimistic about a new future.

A future that could have been.