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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All posts tagged under »unemployment«
Less gold at SA’s rainbow end
Once upon a time and not very long ago, South Africa, as the continent’s largest economy and with a first-world banking and financial sector, was regarded as the potential gateway to investment in Africa. This is no longer the case: investors are tending to look north, to Ghana and even Zambia.
End of the “rainbow nation” fairy tale
November 6, 2012
The last remnants of the South African fairy tale were put to rest in London’s influential Frontline Club in October. A packed audience comprising mainly media workers and more than a handful of public relations and investment advisers clearly concluded that the rainbow nation was no more than a myth. Yet, once upon a time, and not very long ago, when concerned investment groups started casting about to find somewhere outside of the industrialised world to increase the size of their cash piles, they looked to South Africa.
A glimmer of hope for youth unemployment
May 24, 2012
There seems consensus that steps should be taken to alleviate some of the worst aspects of youth unemployment, a crisis that affects more than 75 million young people worldwide. But evidence exists of at least one highly successful project in South Africa of youth training and job placement in the current climate.
Fact, fiction, subsidies & jobless youth
May 20, 2012
Facts, fictions and often emotional assumptions pepper the current intense debate in South Africa about a youth wage subsidy. But there is one fact about which all parties agree: there is a massive problem of youth unemployment. Millions of young men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 simply do not have jobs; they also happen to constitute a potentially crucial voting bloc in any future election.
The ballot box & a youth wage subsidy
May 19, 2012
The battle for the electoral support of the millions of unemployed, unskilled and mostly ill-educated youth in South Africa — perhaps the most crucial voting bloc for the 2014 elections — is now in the open. It came with the decision by the Democratic Alliance (DA) to march on the headquarters of the country’s largest […]
Jobs front cynicism as the debates continue
February 10, 2012
The South African government is optimistically punting figures from the latest Labour Force Survey. The unions take a more cautious view and a closer look at the statistics reveals a still strongly "ticking time bomb" of mass unemployment.
Xmas bells ring in profit — and deeper debt
November 26, 2011
The measures taken to to get the tills of the towns of South Africa ringing for a profitable Xmas season, are similar to those that led, via the sub-prime mortgage debacle in the United States, to the current and ongoing global crisis. This is based on short-term thinking and the extension of unsustainable credit.
Labour thumbs down for SA medium-term budget
October 27, 2011
Overall, the South Africa's medium term budget policy statement has been given a fairly resounding thumbs down by the labour movement. And not just by trade union federations, officials, shop stewards and rank and file members; among the army of the recently retrenched are workers who gave a similar verdict as details of the statement became known.
January 28, 2013
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