Budget Justice Coalition proposes measures to curb unemployment: Matshidiso Lencoasa

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]The Budget Justice Coalition is proposing a range of measures to tackle youth unemployment in this country, including expanding the Basic Education Employment Initiative, scaling up public employment programs, boosting recruitment in health and education sectors, as well as accelerating investment in public infrastructure. To unpack these proposals, I'm joined now by Budget Justice Coalition member and Section 27 Budget Analyst Matshidiso Mnguni. I suppose we can safely call you a friend of the show, is it?

[00:00:33]I think we're there now, are we? I think we are. I'm very honored. Thank you.

[00:00:37]Let's start with the numbers coming out of the quarterly labor force survey and the regression we are seeing in as far as the jobs is concerned. And it's a big one, right? About 345,000 uh jobs lost in the first quarter uh of the year. What accounts for that as far as you can see? Yeah, so it's really disappointing, um but it is a persistent and it is a structural problem when it comes to unemployment in this country.

[00:01:02]So, while we do have the tools which we can get into around our economic policy to position our economy to create jobs for the majority of people in this country, unfortunately, our economy is not yet there. Um we have an economy that even at its best, so if it is growing, um it is driven by sectors that are not labor intensive. So, um I'm thinking about our financial services, like banks for instance. When they grow and they make large profits, it's not they're not hiring a lot of people or they're skill based, they're not labor um based, and so they're not uh creating opportunities at scale um for the majority of people in this country, particularly uh for young people. So, we really um you know, we've seen massive deindustrialization over the past few decades um since the end of apartheid, and so there hasn't been a particular intervention to ensure that uh unemployment uh tackling unemployment is foregrounded in our economic policy, and we're seeing um the results of that today. There's a point that you make about our failure to leverage the budget as an instrument of economic growth and employment creation. What is that point?

[00:02:09]How are we failing to leverage the budget? Yeah, so that's I think one of those low-hanging fruits that we have in in this country is one of the tools that we have at our disposal. So, we have public finances in this country and you know, like every other country, but we decide what we invest in. Over the past decade, our budget has oriented towards impressing markets, especially international markets around the structural reforms, but those you know, the demands of those markets are not exactly the same as the demands and the will of the people because on the ground, people are calling for labor-intensive, you know, we want jobs, especially young people, we want jobs.

[00:02:47]Whereas markets perhaps, you know, are looking at is the economy growing, are they getting the profits that they need?

[00:02:53]And so, the our budget is looking at international markets and bringing in funding and hoping that that funding will then create jobs, but our view is that that's actually, you know, that that's putting it up in the air, whereas we can be more direct and we can have a war-like intervention by actually prioritizing using our public sector and what we do have, which is opportunities for jobs, you know, working in communities, hiring nurses, doctors, teachers, community healthcare workers who in in turn will actually contribute to the and then grow the economy. So, is it your view then Matshidiso and the budget justice coalition and Section 27 that the state should take a leading role in employment creation as opposed to is it your sense that we we we don't have the balance between creating an enabling environment such that the private sector does well and in doing well creates jobs versus the state leading and saying where we have the wherewithal, we will create employment ourselves. Absolutely. I mean, I think that um the budget, as we mentioned, is an underutilized tool. So, we really, because we have such a structural problem, which really should be considered a crisis, but we've normalized unemployment and this idea that the majority of young people do not have um opportunities for meaningful employment. But, if we did not pri- um if we didn't normalize it and we actually prioritized, then we'd use all the tools that we have at our disposal.

[00:04:19]And I think that government has a lot of tools at its disposal. We have the budget. We also have industrial policy, trade policy. We you know, that could better position our economy to be to say, "How can we do uh good for the people in this country? How can we invest in the people of this country?"

[00:04:34]And in turn, um as people make money, they can actually contribute to the fiscals, and then it also grows and invests our um and builds our our country and also improves our public services. And there's a point you make also about the nature uh and structure of unemployment in this country that it's it it doesn't affect everyone the same way. That whole concept of people saying, "Well, we are all facing the same storm." Some are facing it in a yacht, others are facing it in a rickety uh dinghy of a boat. Uh and you make the point that certain segments of our society are affected worse than others. Talk to that a bit more and why that is. Absolutely. So, currently, the statistics do show that um unemployment, yes, it affects people in this country um at large, but it is concentrated around predominantly young people, predominantly uh black women.

[00:05:23]So, young black women have often been cited as the face of unemployment. And you know, just judging my own experiences and speaking to people in my demographic, it it does uh check out.

[00:05:34]And I think there are many uh reasons for that. I think one of the reasons is that the kind of sectors that we invest in, our economic policy, are sectors where we do not usually find young black women. So, we see young black women traditionally in sectors like the care economy or you know even industries you know textile industries which have de-industrialized and so those opportunities perhaps they were not great but they did exist and now they we are losing those opportunities but we're not replacing them with anything else and I think that also interventions like saying that we need to reduce our public sector wage bill without considering that most of that actually goes to frontline workers and frontline workers are predominant like nurses and teachers are predominant and community health workers are predominantly young black women. So when we do not invest in creating opportunities there it does have a gendered a racial a class impact and it does exacerbate inequality in our country.

[00:06:28]>> And I like that you mentioned that the the role of the care economy as an employment driver because it brings me to the solutions we are putting on the table. Let's call it your five-point plan which you are submitting to government. Talk to me about how bringing back and expanding the basic education employment initiative. These are the teacher assistants, right? How that alongside scaling up public employment programs like EPWP and the likes, hiring more doctors as well as investing more in public infrastructure projects we are told about a trillion rand over the next three years. These five points, how would they come together such that they pack a punch in our fight against unemployment?

[00:07:08]>> Yeah, so we definitely see a triple dividend in that. So if the government actually does invest in that, first of all it fulfills its constitutional obligation to the people. So our public services will be in a better condition because there'll be less overcrowding.

[00:07:23]Nurses will have a better nurses and community health care workers will have workload that is manageable and can deliver quality services. So on the one hand we already we can tick that box but it's also not a charitable act because we might be you know we reallocate money towards this effort towards increasing employment. We hire nurses, we hire doctors, we hire teachers, we hire we build our public sector and serve our people. Those people who are hired in those positions will pay taxes. Those taxes will contribute into our fiscus.

[00:07:55]That fiscus will grow and then our economy will grow. So, I think that our currently our status quo is just re just prioritizing privatization without actually thinking what can we do now with the low hanging fruits and those are some of the interventions that we can. So, our five-point plan um can work in tandem with SMMEs and investing in those to to grow because they also hire young people and in that we can really just have an economy that works for everyone. Matshidiso, thank you for coming through once again and having that conversation with us. That's Matshidiso who is from the Budget Justice Coalition, a member there. Also, Section 27's budget [music] analyst Matshidiso Lingwasa.