JOBS CRISIS OP-ED: Bring back the Basic Education Employment Initiative — SA youth need it urgently

South Africa’s unemployment figures are not just statistics for the young people living through them. They represent millions who want to contribute but cannot find an opening, according to the Masinyusane Development Organisation.

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey put expanded unemployment among young people at 47.4%. Formal-sector employment also fell by 41,000 jobs in three months, with the largest losses in community and social services, a sector that employs many young people.

Masinyusane argues that the damage reaches beyond lost income. Unemployment affects confidence, identity and people’s sense of direction. The organisation saw a different kind of opportunity during the last round of the Basic Education Employment Initiative, when it trained more than 400 young people to deliver Zazi iZandi, a mother-tongue, play-based programme designed to help pupils reach the Grade 1 reading benchmark.

The education assistants supported teachers and helped children learn to read, while gaining income, experience and a sense of purpose themselves. Since 2020, the initiative has created more than one million opportunities, particularly in rural and economically struggling areas. More applicants and assistants were women, and 96% of school management team members welcomed the support, the piece says.

Masinyusane also reports that, after six weeks of Zazi iZandi, the share of pupils meeting the 40-letters-per-minute reading benchmark rose from 12.3% to 32.4%. When the contracts ended, the organisation retained more than 100 assistants through other funding because it did not want to lose the progress made in schools or in the young people’s lives.

The organisation says youth unemployment takes many forms. Its assistants included recent school-leavers, university graduates, mothers and family breadwinners dealing with poor job prospects, food insecurity, mental-health difficulties and trauma. Despite those pressures, it says, young people are not lazy or without hope. The piece presents public employment as a way to generate social returns as well as temporary economic relief, and argues that the initiative should be brought back.