The RSA government has followed a neo-liberal macro economic policy for the past 15 years, this policy was championed by Trevor Manuel and now Pravin Gordam. The outcome of this policy position has been deinstrialisation and massive jop losses, as RSA enetered the global economic market without assistance by the state (as happens with the US, China, etc). The fact that today RSA has high levels of unemployment should be blamed on the Ministry of Finance. Instead of acknowledging the failure of their policies the gentlemen who made the same rules are now blaming it on labour.In doing so they are following the very same instititutions that mislead them to this disfunctional economic policy.

over the past 10 years the economy has grown without delivering jobs, when celebrating the high growth Manuel did not congratulate labour, instead they all took credit. if you consider what has happened durring that period the RSA economy was skewed away from Manufacturing and more jobs were crteated in the security, service and hospitality industry. unfortunately these sectors that they gloated about have a low multiplier effect and the growth had to cease, creating domestic worker jobs (largely tourism) and a large base base of security guards. Consider the quality of the jobs created by the Public works program to appreciate the desperation in job creation.

Now that Manuel and Gordham have run out of ideas they look to punishing labour over the failure of policies that labour opposed in the first place. I find their suggestions hilarious in that you will not employ more people in your factory simply because you can get them cheaper and dismiss them at will, this shows lack of understanding of how manufactring works. I would like them to take me to that factory that will employ more people if they are cheap and not because they have demand for their products. The simple fact that these gentlemen must face is that they have had 15 years of telling us what is good for us and they must admit failure.

Manuel and Gordam have been destructive to the manufacturing base, they have opened the gates to imports even where our Trading partners have closed theirs. The crying shame is their failure to fund Eskom's recapitalisation and forcing Eskom to increase pricees by a factor of 5 to ther own inflation target.The impact of that is that we will soon loose all the smelters in the country, manufacturres are all under pressure with Escom increase, lack of benchamrked tarris and duties. That is why you do not hear them bemoan labour costs, there are bigger issues out there and they are all decided in Pravin's office, three fingers are pointinmg at you Minister.

A simple lesson to the Minister is that he should be investing in Escom (which was historicaly the foundation of manufaturing) to collect more taxes (instead of killing the maniufacturing base). His returns will be negative as more companies close because of high electricity costs, not labour costs.

As for the World Bank and IMF, it is not true that they are the bigger investors in RSA, this must be balanced against RSA savings in insurance and retirement funds which Gordham is encouraging to leave our shore. If South Africa is to develop it needs to stop taking advice from these institutions, the UK and USA have lost the trade war to the East whilst following the advise of these institutions, the UK has completely losty its manufacturing.

There can never be a solution to youth unemployment through the scheme that National Treasury is proposing. if companies need staff they will employ them, jobs are not a favour. Why would a factory manager not optimally resource his factory, a factory that has orders and does not operate at optimum level is ineffeciently run, period. Additional employment is for capturing additionsl demand and not to contribute to job creation. If indeed the Minister wants the youth to gain skills he should fund all apprentice trainming, make money available to other ministries to start Nursing and Teacher colleges, send the youth to Germany, China, India and the USA for training. There is no logic to the propsed scheme other than to pass the buck!

The day we have lower paid workers than we do today the retail industry will suffer as disposable income plumets, factory demand will fall, fiscal income will drop. This will trigger a vicious cycle of low wages creating low demand resulting in job losses across all sectors of the economy. Even Pick and Pay needs better paid workers to sell their expensive goods to, otherwise we will accelelerate the downward spiral that came from the economic polices which Pravin and Trevor received from the World Bank and IMF.

South Africa is a rich country, its citizens are kep poor by the macro economic poliy that do not exploit its strength.

Khandani Msibi