Are we really un-skilled and therefore un-employable or is the economy stupid? The problems we are facing in society (at least as far as South African society is concerned in particular) have been dominantly summarized into three ‘evils’, namely Poverty, Inequality and Unemployment. It is believed by many, especially the dominant political and economic establishment that the former- Poverty and Inequality could be dealt with by addressing the latter-Unemployment. Practically we are told, this could be done by both the state (public sector) and capital (private sector) designing policies and programmes that would facilitate increased participation of the youth- in particular- in the labour market; the predicament in pursuit of this noble goal, we are told is that the youth is unskilled and therefore as ‘the ship of noble intentions‘ reach an ‘iceberg of skills deficit’, the economy shed massive waves of unemployment, and thus reproduce poverty and inequalities (mainly structural inequalities) in society; therefore because the problem is the youth that is unskilled or has no relevant skills, the solution is to ‘skill the youth’ ; this is a dominant assumption, not only in political circles, but also in the media and academia; the main question we pose therefore is ARE WE REALLY UNSKILLED OR IS THE ECONOMY STUPID? I think such a debate would be relevant in the Zimbabwean context as it is an epitome of the fate faced by our youths. With such an issue being discussed in South Africa and other parts of the world it makes youth unemployment a global challenge that has to be dealt with in order to curb poverty and inequality.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:28:54 +0000
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