Jacob Zuma failed his promise of 500 000 jobs, DA: how can we trust him to create 4million

 Cape Town, South Africa – The ANC president Jacob Zuma promised to create 500 000 jobs and 4million jobs by 2014 but he seems to busy with his weddings so that promise failed. 

According to the DA, one million jobs have been lost during the recession.

Statement by the DA:

The ANC’s vague promise to create four million “job opportunities” by 2014 can be trusted just about as much as the similarly vague commitment to create half a million new jobs by the end of 2009. To put it bluntly: we had no reason to believe that that target could be achieved – certainly not by relying only on the extended public works (EPW) programme – and we have just as little reason to believe that this target will be achieved either.

 
In fact, one million jobs have been lost during the recession. To be sure, these are difficult economic times, but it is certainly also not the case that the President and his economic advisers were unaware of the advent of a recession when they came into office. That was a pledge made in full knowledge of our economic difficulties, and the failure of the administration to follow through on it was inevitable when it became clear that no real economic turnaround strategy was in place to create those jobs. 
 
And all of this comes within the context of the Zuma administration’s fixation on banning labour brokers, which is patently not conducive to job creation – indeed will destroy up to half a million jobs. The contrast could not be more poignant between the claims by Membathisi Mdladlana that labour broking provides a low quality of employment opportunity, and the President relying on temporary public works jobs to bolster employment. Somehow, with the help of Cosatu, this administration has convinced itself that a labour-brokered job in a call centre is akin to slavery, but hard labour EPW jobs are just fine.
 
The administration’s tardy and misguided response to the economic downturn is yet to have any effect on the broader economy. The fact that the state has had to provide almost R 250 billion in financial assistance to parastatals over the past four years proves that drastic action needs to be taken. 
 
A systematic and urgent rethink on crucial economic issues needs to be undertaken during this year. Most significantly for job creation is the state of our labour market. The current regulatory stranglehold on businesses actively inhibits the hiring of new workers, and keeps unemployment far higher than it ought to be. But the danger is that the rabid ANC clampdown on legitimate labour brokers will only create further red tape and so thwart real progress towards an employment-friendly economy.
 
There is a deeper philosophical question that the ANC will need to confront this year: does it believe, as its partners on the far left keep telling them, that only the state can be relied upon to create jobs, or will they recognise that the private sector employs the majority of South Africans, and that it is private sector employment opportunities that will hold the key to our future job creation prospects? 
 
In their statement, the ANC leadership claims that “…the expanded public works programme will lay the foundation for the attainment of our target to create 4-million work opportunities by 2014” but the fact of the matter is that continuing to rely on the EPW to create jobs will create neither the number of new jobs that we need, nor the quality of job opportunities that are urgently needed to lift poor South Africans out of poverty.
 
A continuation of the status quo would prove to be extremely unfortunate. The policy paralysis and growing influence of special interest groups within official policy can only hamper job creation. And if the President is serious about creating four million new jobs, he should take cognisance of the fact that his strategy to create 500,000 new jobs, using the EPW, fell flat, and a long-term plan needs to be centred around fostering market-based job creation. The ANC’s “developmental state” strategy can certainly not do that.