Current Edition >> Archive Section >> Letters to the editor >> 1-15 June 2005

Skills shortage: Other side of story

Your front page article “Skills gap is hitting SA - and the Free State - for a six” (FS Business Bulletin, 16/5/06) is unduly alarmist and is leaving others, specifically the white population of our country, in panic. There is no doubt that South Africa, especially the Free State province, is in dire need of skills, but this article is slanted towards anti-affirmative action.
On the other side of the sterile skills shortage statistics are living human beings. It is for this reason that the Presidential Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) was created.
South Africa's skills shortage can be traced back to the 1950's and today it is still found that in many employer organisations where institutional culture surveys have been conducted, reports point to downright racism and sexism.
A comparative country case study that shares many qualities (particularly economic features) with South Africa is Brazil. In comparison to their mostly affluent Euro-Brazilian counterparts, Afro-Brazilians comprise the vast majority of the 'unemployables'; 70% live in squalor in the crime-ridden favelas (informal settlements). However, one interesting fact is that Brazil has been a “racial democracy” for 118 years now, whereas South Africa has been a “non-racial democracy” for 12 years.
One other question not addressed in the “skills gap” article, is that South African universities have produced hundreds of thousands of loans-owing graduates who are currently unemployed and are mostly to be found in every township, town and village. South African businesses could achieve greater good through investing in these, especially in the fishery, construction, mining and farming sectors.
A lesson in growing our economy while ensuring optimum employment levels, is that the market institution (in this respect both investment and labour markets) cannot on its own correct bias employment practices, facilitate skills enhancement and equity. It is here where a level of government intervention is necessary.
While monetary repatriations of South Africans working overseas are almost unquantifiable, we are nonetheless assured that some South Africans are fleeing their capital out of the country and into the already saturated and developed Western countries' markets.
Amongst the lessons for the Free State economy, it is that we should focus our attention to the development of the capacity of, but not limited to, the petro-chemical and agri economies, while also establish fruitful international relations to back-up localised training and skills development institutions. As Free State citizens we should take a concerted - instead of a blame-seeking - approach aimed at establishing resourceful relationships with flourishing international players like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany, East Africa, China and others.
Sitting on our laurels and crying foul is a rather cowardly approach.

MI Papi Nkoli
Private Bag 3
Wits 2050
(Originally from Tumahole, Parys)