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The release of Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2023 has shown that the country’s expanded unemployment rate still sits at 41.2% which means that the country has now had an expanded unemployment rate above 40% for the past 14 quarters.

Statistics South Africa shows that two out of every five South Africans, or 11.7 million people, have been without a job for the past three and a half years and highlights the urgent need for a solid economic policy which can create jobs and lift millions out of poverty.

It is clear the only way to fix our economy is to remove the ruling party whose economic policies have failed to create jobs and improve the lives of our people. At ActionSA’s policy conference in September we adopted a comprehensive policy on Economic Prosperity and Economic Justice to ensure that we protect the most vulnerable in society and create jobs.

These policies include a range of interventions to stabilise our economy and ignite apprenticeship, growth and job creation. This includes stabilising the energy market, reducing the role of unions, and stabilising the labour market to make it easier for businesses to do business and create jobs to address the current dire situation.

Among the various interventions adopted at ActionSA's inaugural policy conference in September, we propose to promote funding of entrepreneurial ventures by introducing low-interest, government-secured loans for small to medium enterprises, and to deal with rolling blackouts by liberalising the electricity market and introducing private competition.

We will fast-track the development of new industries and technologies and foster a culture of innovation and competition so that we can diversify the economy and create new sources of growth.

The bureaucratic red tape, procurement inefficiencies and corruption of infrastructure investment should also be reduced to create the economic infrastructure necessary for businesses to succeed, while the bureaucracy around doing business reduced to make it easier to register companies and find funding.

The dismal expanded unemployment rate speaks to an urgent need for change in government in 2024 to improve the lives of our people which is why ActionSA have embarked on a nationwide campaign to register as many new voters as possible to vote in next year’s elections. A better more prosperous South Africa is within our reach.

Issued by ActionSA President, Herman Mashaba