Mabila Mathebula
I once saw a skeleton of a woman who had been waiting for a prince in shining armour. She met scores of illustrious men who were born to no titles but achieved fame by their own energy and genius.
When men approached and lauded her for being a perfect creature, she would thank them for the evident sincerity of the compliment, but not for the extraordinary publicity given to it. When people questioned her behaviour, she would give them plausible excuses for not agreeing to their proposal. In her absent-mindedness, she could not fathom the fact that the man she had been waiting an eternity for was a mirage.
Equally, when I heard several political parties proclaiming to their followers that they would create jobs in the next administration, I mused: How would they create jobs in a weak economic climate? The truth is, it is a base fraud – a snare to trap the unwary-chaff to catch fledglings.
I was compelled to consult my economics textbook, which I have owned for almost 30 years, to read about the unemployment during the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1933. I was shocked to discover that the Great Depression afflicted almost a fifth of the labour force in the industrial world.
Many families had no income and most men who could not enact the traditional role of a provider committed suicide. Covid-19 and the Russian-Ukraine war have created another Great Depression globally.
When Professor Milton Friedman was asked what brought him to economics, he answered: “I took my first courses in economics in 1930 and 1931, during the depths of the Depression. The choice for me was very easy, since the Depression was clearly the single most important issue facing the world.”
Unemployment is clearly the most important issue facing the nation. It is not only the role of the national government and the private sector to create jobs; all of us must be part of the job creation crew.
We need to employ what I call the “Joseph Effect”, where you hold jobs that are looked down upon by society. In Genesis 47: 33-34, Joseph told his brothers: “So it shall be, when Pharaoh calls you and says: ‘What is your occupation?’ “That you shall say: ‘Your servants’ occupation has been with livestock from our fathers,’ that you may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”
When I was growing up in Soweto, railway, municipal and mining jobs were an abomination to the Sowetans. The same applied to the emancipated slaves in America – manual labour was an abomination to them. I once hailed a taxi to St Louis and had a free-wheeling with the taxi driver, I was shocked to gather that he had a Master’s degree and he told me that in America: “You go where the dollar is.”
We always complain that colonisation and the migrant labour system destroyed subsistence farming and the black family. Let me add that the two systems also brought about laziness, idleness, an inflated sense of entitlement and a belief that the government must do everything for us.
Our forebears were never unemployed. They woke up every morning with a purpose. Nearly every foot of ground was under cultivation and two or three crops a year of each article were produced. Like Joseph’s brothers, they had no education but they were passionate about what they had been doing for the common good of society. Our traditional authorities must enact their roles of getting our people back to work and forget about their perquisites from the government. Human rights lawyers must not interfere with the job creation process.
“You cannot manage what you cannot measure.” So goes the management proverb. Traditional leaders must be measured on how their subjects work the land. There must be consequence management for traditional authorities who are status occupants but not role players. Our young people must cotton on to the idea of agriculture and farming.
Minister Louis Farrakhan once visited a Christian community in Belize. Belize is on the north-eastern coast of America and shares its borders with Mexico. He was surprised that the farmers there had only 8th Grade education and managed 100 acres of land. They are wealthy and feed half their population. There is no unemployment since everyone is working for the collective good of their community.
Urban mobility has killed our desire to be farmers. Anne Landers, the popular columnist, said: “Opportunities are very usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognise them.” I am looking for a political home and I have not yet heard anyone talking about rural mobility. What I have heard are strategies to dislodge the ANC in the next election. We need the government to engage companies, such as ZZ2, to produce more farmers.
If the government cannot create authentic jobs, jobs of doubtful reputation will automatically create themselves. Some people have made violent crime, prostitution, spiritual thuggery and the selling of drugs their jobs. A weak economy has an ability to create its own jobs that neither benefit the fiscus nor the nation’s moral compass.
Some social implications of a weak economic climate are gender-based violence, the escalation of divorces, separation and suicide. For example, there are single mothers who are struggling to raise their children because their fathers are unemployed. When the fathers apply for jobs, they are told that preference would be given to women and people with disabilities.
Simply put, affirmative action and employment equity have unintended consequences for men and other racial groups during a weak economic climate. As a country, we must look at how AA and EE could lead to suicide and alienation. We are trying to diversify the workplace while we are subjecting other people to suicide and sending others into exile (brain drain).
Author and life coach Mathebula has a PhD in construction management.
The Star