Govt must take new path

JOBLESSNESS: SCALING UP PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMMES IS ANSWER

- Luthando Brukwe

In too many of South Africa's rural towns, mornings begin with waiting. Young people wake up and linger on street corners, scanning their phones, hoping for an SMS about work that never comes.

Parents stretch social grants to cover not just their own households, but extended families. The sense of hopelessness is thick - but it doesn't have to be this way.

Unemployment is South Africa's deepest wound and it cuts hardest in rural areas. There, young people and women carry the burden of an economy that has left them behind.

For decades, we've tried to patch this wound with tenders and contracts, enriching a few while leaving communities stranded.

It is time for government to take a different path - one rooted not in outsourcing, but in dignity: scaling up Public Employment Programmes (Peps).

Since 1994, government has relied heavily on private contractors and outsourcing to deliver services and infrastructure. The assumption was that the market would bring efficiency and accountability.

Instead, we got inflated costs, uneven delivery and endemic corruption.

The result is stark: rural communities are littered with half-built schools, pothole-ridden roads and clinics with broken water systems - while unemployment remains stubbornly high.

Outsourcing has created jobs for intermediaries, not for the people most in need.

In this sense, "development" has too often meant siphoning resources out of poor communities instead of building capacity within them. The dignity of labour has been eroded and trust in government has worn thin.