South Africans Don’t Need Jobs

By Noko Maleka – Insight Jozi News | [22/09/2024]

For decades, South Africans have been fed the same political promise: “We will create jobs.” Election after election, this promise resurfaces like a broken record, and yet unemployment remains one of the highest in the world. Currently, South Africa’s unemployment rate hovers above 32%, with youth unemployment surpassing 45%. These statistics prove one simple truth: South Africans do not need jobs — they need ownership.

The tragedy of our democracy is how easily citizens have become gullible to politicians and the media. Whenever a president or political party announces a plan to “create jobs,” many celebrate without asking the most important question: Where will these jobs come from?

The reality is this: no president, no matter how charismatic, can directly manufacture employment on a scale that will fix unemployment. Governments simply don’t have the mechanisms to employ tens of millions of people. At best, they can expand the public sector, but even that is bloated, unsustainable, and drains taxpayer resources.

A Cycle of Promises

This illusion has been part of our history since the dawn of democracy. In 1994, Nelson Mandela inspired the nation with hope for a better life, but even he warned that economic freedom would be a longer, harder struggle than political freedom. Thabo Mbeki, during his presidency, spoke of building an “African Renaissance,” yet unemployment soared past 25% under his watch.

More recently, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised that his administration would create two million jobs for young people within ten years through initiatives like the Youth Employment Service (YES). Yet the numbers tell a different story: youth unemployment has instead risen to devastating levels. Politicians speak, citizens applaud, but the economic reality remains unchanged.

The problem lies in the system itself. We have placed too much faith in politicians to solve unemployment, when in fact, the solution is staring us in the face: South Africans must become creators, not seekers.

The Small Business Revolution

South Africa’s economy is dominated by a handful of large corporations, many of them foreign-owned. Meanwhile, our small businesses — the backbone of any thriving economy — struggle to access funding, infrastructure, and markets. Statistics show that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute more than 34% to the country’s GDP, yet over 70% of small businesses fail within the first five years due to lack of support.

This is where government must rethink its role. Instead of selling dreams about jobs that will never come, government should:

1. Fund small businesses owned by South Africans.
2. Take up to 50% shareholding in those businesses.
3. Ensure these businesses are managed by boards accountable to both owners and government.

This model ensures that small businesses have access to capital, mentorship, and proper governance structures. At the same time, it keeps government invested in their success because it shares directly in the profits and growth.

Why This Model Works

When South Africans — black and white alike — are empowered with businesses that thrive, the demand for employees will skyrocket. Local entrepreneurs will need cashiers, drivers, engineers, accountants, and marketers. The private sector will no longer be dominated by mega-corporations that hire in limited numbers, but by thousands of locally-owned enterprises hungry for workers.

Ironically, this model will even solve the “foreigners taking jobs” debate. Once South Africans own the majority of businesses and create a strong demand for employees, foreign nationals who come here will not be stealing jobs — they will be filling the labor gap in industries where demand outweighs supply. In this way, migration stops being a threat and instead becomes an asset.

Beyond Dependency

South Africans must wake up from the illusion that salvation comes from politicians. Job promises are political theatre designed to win votes, not genuine solutions. As Mandela once said, “Freedom is meaningless if people cannot put food on the table.” But freedom also becomes hollow when citizens are trained to beg for jobs instead of being empowered to own the means of production.

True empowerment is not in waiting for government to hand out jobs, but in creating a society where every South African has a stake in the economy.

We don’t need jobs.
We need ownership.
We need thriving businesses.
We need a government that stops dangling carrots of false promises and instead becomes a real partner in building an economy that works for the majority.

Until then, unemployment will remain our permanent crisis. But if we shift from being gullible to being innovative, from waiting to owning, South Africa can finally rise to its full potential.

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The ANC is a Criminal Enterprise

The ANC is a Criminal Enterprise

By Noko Maleka | Insight Jozi News

South Africa is a country blessed with potential, yet crippled by leadership failures. This truth was laid bare once again when political analyst and author, Prince Mashele, appeared on the State of the Nation podcast with Mike Sham. His words were not coated in diplomacy, but charged with the urgency of a citizen who has had enough of watching his country drift under the weight of incompetence.

Mashele’s criticism comes hot on the heels of his now-viral interview on the Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh Show, which attracted over a million views. Clearly, South Africans are listening, because he is saying what many are thinking but few dare to articulate: the ANC has lost all credibility, and President Cyril Ramaphosa is a man completely out of his depth in the highest office of the land.

A Circus Called “National Dialogue”

In the podcast, Mashele tore into the much-publicised “national dialogue” initiated by the ANC, dismissing it as nothing more than a political circus. Instead of engaging meaningfully with the crisis of unemployment, collapsing state institutions, and a faltering economy, he argued that the ANC was staging yet another empty performance. “It is not a dialogue—it is a show,” Mashele declared, underscoring the disconnection between government theatrics and the lived reality of ordinary South Africans.

Ramaphosa’s Irony of Wealth and Poverty

Perhaps the sharpest dagger came when Mashele took aim at Ramaphosa’s public musings on inequality. The President recently asked South Africans to reflect on why some people are rich while others are poor. Mashele’s response was scathing: “How dare Ramaphosa pose that question, when he himself is one of the richest men in the country?”

It was not merely a rhetorical jab—it was a moral indictment. For Mashele, Ramaphosa represents the very embodiment of South Africa’s contradictions: a leader who speaks about poverty from the comfort of his fortune, while failing to create policies that address the structural inequalities deepening the gap between rich and poor.

The ANC: From Liberation Movement to Criminal Enterprise

In perhaps the boldest statement of the conversation, Mashele described the ANC as nothing short of a criminal enterprise. His reasoning was simple: a party that presides over state capture, looting, cadre deployment, and the deliberate hollowing out of government institutions cannot be described otherwise.

This is not the ANC of liberation glory. It is a party that has cannibalised the state and betrayed the very people it once vowed to liberate. For Mashele, the ANC is no longer an organisation of visionaries; it is a network of opportunists feeding on the country’s resources while preaching empty slogans to the masses.

Why His Voice Matters

Prince Mashele has become one of the sharpest political commentators in modern South Africa, not because he speaks politely, but because he speaks plainly. His message resonates because the frustration of citizens has reached boiling point. When his interviews go viral, it’s not just entertainment—it’s a reflection of how deeply the public craves accountability and truth in a time of national despair.

South Africa stands at a crossroads. The ANC may continue to brand itself as the custodian of democracy, but voices like Mashele’s force us to confront a painful question: what happens when the custodian becomes the criminal?

https://youtu.be/FmZykqcW844?si=87O-UuLRYXnNndSF

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The ANC and the Illusion of Liberation

 South Africa has been sold a lie of freedom—a meticulously crafted illusion by the architects of apartheid. The release of Nelson Mandela, once heralded as the dawn of liberation, was a calculated move by a cunning apartheid regime. Mandela was paraded globally, not as a symbol of true emancipation but as a puppet of a more sophisticated system of oppression. The apartheid government knew their crimes. And  brutality was unsustainable in the face of growing international scrutiny. They needed a new strategy—a subtler form of control that would maintain their grip on economic power while pacifying the masses with the illusion of democracy.

This strategy was executed with surgical precision. Mandela, the revered revolutionary, was systematically groomed and manipulated during his post-release world tours. By 1992, he stood at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, delivering a speech that was a far cry from his earlier socialist ideals. Overnight, the African National Congress abandoned its radical economic policies, signaling to the world that South Africa’s new leadership would play by the rules of global capitalism—a system inherently skewed in favor of the West and its historical beneficiaries.

This betrayal was the final nail in the coffin for genuine liberation. Instead of holding the architects of apartheid accountable for their crimes, the ANC extended an olive branch, preaching reconciliation to a nation that had not yet healed. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission became a stage for performative apologies, while the real perpetrators of systemic oppression walked away unscathed. The much-needed economic redress—the redistribution of land and wealth—was shelved in favor of appeasing white monopoly capital (WMC).

Today, the ANC has morphed into an entity that protects the very interests it once vowed to dismantle. It has betrayed the millions of South Africans who placed their faith in the ballot box, believing that change would come through the power of their vote. Instead, the ANC government has perfected the art of deception, selling dreams of a better tomorrow while perpetuating a system that enriches the elite few at the expense of the suffering masses.

The scars of apartheid remain deeply etched into the fabric of this nation. Land, wealth, and opportunities are still concentrated in the hands of the white minority, while the black majority languishes in poverty and unemployment. The ANC’s incompetence and corruption have only deepened these wounds. The leadership has prioritized personal enrichment over national progress, feeding off a system designed to exploit.

Moeletsi Mbeki once said that the ANC entered power in 1994 without a coherent economic strategy. For an organization that had fought for over eight decades, this was a damning indictment. It is evident that the ANC underestimated the complexity and ruthlessness of the system they sought to dismantle. Since assuming power, they have been playing catch-up, learning about governance while the architects of apartheid and global capitalism tightened their stranglehold on the economy.

The South African dream of liberation remains a mirage. The apartheid government, in its final years, masterfully transitioned into a system of neo-colonialism, where the tools of oppression are subtler but just as effective. The ANC, whether through naivety or complicity, became the gatekeepers of this system. It is now up to new movements and alliances, like the EFF and MK Party, to reignite the revolutionary spirit and challenge the status quo.

Disclaimer: Some of the views expressed in this article are personal opinions and reflections gathered from public discourse. As an independent writer, I aim to explore issues that mainstream journalism often shies away from, sparking conversations that push us closer to the truth.

By Noko Mabofa Maleka 

SA Government Has No Political Will to Improve the Lives of Ordinary Citizens – Only the Elite Thrive..Elon Musk

 

Insight Jozi News

By Noko Maleka

SA Government Has No Political Will to Improve the Lives of Ordinary Citizens – Only the Elite Thrive

Elon Musk

Is It Time to Revisit B-BBEE? Elon Musk's Critique Sparks a Tough but Necessary Debate

picture by: Ashraf Hendricks

When tech billionaire Elon Musk recently declared that Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa "because I'm not black," he reignited a longstanding and increasingly contentious debate about the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) policy and its real impact on the South African economy. While Musk's remarks may have come across as controversial, they demand a sober and critical examination—particularly from black South Africans—about who truly benefits from such laws and whether they serve the broader public good or merely entrench elite privilege.

1. Equity Ownership Requirements

South African regulations mandate that telecommunications companies seeking certain licenses must have at least 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups. This is part of B-BBEE, a policy meant to redress past injustices and empower black South Africans economically. But in practice, how much empowerment is truly happening?

Musk criticized the requirement, suggesting it effectively blocks companies like SpaceX from operating locally, despite the potential benefits of such partnerships. "Not allowed to operate because I’m not black," he tweeted, arguing that these rules exclude innovative foreign investment under the guise of transformation.

Government officials were quick to refute his claim, insisting that the issue is not race but compliance with South African law. Still, Musk's assertion touches on a deeper truth: these equity requirements often serve politically connected individuals rather than the average black South African striving to break into the business world.

2. High Import Duties on Electric Vehicles

Another obstacle to Musk's ventures in South Africa, particularly Tesla, is the prohibitively high import duties on electric vehicles. According to TechCentral, Musk has pointed out that these taxes are among the highest globally, making it almost impossible to introduce affordable electric mobility to the South African market. This not only hinders innovation and sustainability goals but also keeps environmentally friendly technologies out of reach for most South Africans.

In a country battling severe load-shedding and looking for cleaner alternatives, one must ask: why are we making it harder to access clean tech? Instead of encouraging investment and local manufacturing, these duties protect a nonexistent local EV industry—effectively maintaining the status quo.

3. Political and Personal Factors

Musk’s criticism doesn't end at economics. He has also been vocal about what he sees as the political direction of South Africa, particularly the land reform agenda and affirmative action measures, which he believes stray from Nelson Mandela’s original vision of inclusivity and fairness. Personal experiences—such as violence during his schooling years and estranged family relationships—may color his views, but they do not invalidate his economic concerns.

A Time for Honest Reflection

With South Africa’s unemployment rate currently hovering around 32.1% in Q1 of 2024 and youth unemployment exceeding 60%, we must confront the uncomfortable truth: B-BBEE, in its current form, has not delivered on its promises. Instead of a broad-based upliftment, the policy has arguably created a class of politically connected beneficiaries, leaving millions in poverty.

According to Stats SA, by early 2025, the unemployment rate showed little improvement. These figures paint a sobering picture—especially in a country where economic inequality remains among the highest in the world.

Musk’s critique, though bold and imperfectly phrased, forces us to ask: Are our laws truly empowering the people they claim to serve? Or have they become tools for perpetuating corruption and gatekeeping by those aligned with the ruling party?

It is becoming glaringly obvious that many South African politicians have no genuine will to improve the dignity and economic well-being of the ordinary citizen. Investors, entrepreneurs, and innovators frequently highlight the B-BBEE requirements as a barrier to entry, describing them as bureaucratic tools used by elites to secure wealth and influence.

This reality is further evidenced by the conspicuous accumulation of wealth by politicians who, since 1994, have neither invented nor contributed to any meaningful economic solution—yet they’ve become millionaires and billionaires while the country’s economy steadily declines.

The World Bank and Transparency International have noted South Africa’s persistent issues with corruption and mismanagement, particularly in state-owned enterprises and procurement processes. These trends suggest that transformation policies, while well-intentioned, have become avenues for looting rather than liberation.

The time has come for a national conversation—not about repealing B-BBEE entirely, but about reforming it to truly serve ordinary South Africans. We need policies that attract global innovation, create jobs, and foster real entrepreneurship—not ones that preserve political patronage under the banner of transformation.

As we reflect on Musk’s statements and South Africa's current economic trajectory, we must ask ourselves: Are we brave enough to admit when a good policy has gone wrong? And are we ready to fix it before it’s too late?

Sources:

TechCentral

Daily News Egypt Africa

IOL

Stats SA

World Bank - South Africa Overview

Transparency International - South Africa