That South Africa has a massive skills shortage to power a modern economy is not in contest. The question is, what must South Africa do to breed skills that will unlock the potential of its 60-million people?
Key to inhibiting access to this potential is reflected in student struggles. To date, the most illustrious battle that demonstrated the power of human agency was the 1976 Soweto uprising against an intransigent government. This triggered the precipitous coalescing of forces that brought apartheid to its knees. However, the fundamental stumbling block in accessing quality education is far from being attained and relative to white achievement. Blacks are in reverse gear. Forty years on, the Fees Must Fall movement took root in 2016, causing the government to pay attention to student funding. Then-president Jacob Zuma’s parting shot on free tertiary education did not see the light of day. Instead, it was rationalised in ways that diminished the call by students that fees must fall, a call to build human capital for South Africa. Our policy response, however, was minimal.
Thus, of little surprise are ongoing protests at the beginning of the academic year. In an unprecedented move, students marched, in the thick of night, to the residence of the vice-chancellor of Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand. This points to the deep-rooted, unfinished business of students’ struggles that predate the postapartheid era and continue today, as characterised not only by the Soweto student uprising but by sporadic student movements that were suppressed from as far back as the Fifties.
The articulate call by the Reconstruction and Development Programme was not a mistake in further opening the doors of learning. Evidence from successive surveys by Statistics South Africa show almost 97% of children aged seven to 14 are in school. This represents a great achievement in terms of access and attendance, as year in and year out we witness the human waste that follows from low-performance rates into matric, at school-leaving level and in obtaining the National Senior Certificate. If the Fees Must Fall movement shook the country, wait for the weight of children we fail year in, year out when their patience with living in poverty runs out.
According to Statistics South Africa's 2021 General Household Survey, 13% of youth live in households that experience hunger. The highest rates thereof are in the Northern Cape, where a quarter of the youth are hungry. This is followed by the Western Cape, with a fifth and the North West with 17.6% With the fallout from Covid-19 and an underperforming economy, this unacceptable scourge will no doubt seize the energy of the country when the rich build higher walls and acquire more sophisticated security systems to keep the hungry at bay. The hungry who are poised to sink into deeper hunger.
When a minimalist state places major barricades to access, students are left with no choice but to march in the middle of the night to the vice-chancellor’s residence to demand it. This legitimate grievance that advances the human progeny is met with aggressive responses.
Yet South Africa’s dilemma is not about being poor, it is about being unable to acquire a skill, preferably a degree, because that increases one's chances of earning a living. Graduate unemployment is lower than a third of general unemployment at 10% and a fifth of unemployment of those who haven't reached matric. The problem is increasing the supply of skills. But when a minimalist state places major barricades to access, students are left with no choice but to march in the middle of the night to a vice-chancellor’s residence to demand it. This legitimate grievance that advances the human progeny is met with aggressive responses — the suspension or arrest of students whose grievances are legitimate, with no resolutions in sight. The response by Wits to suspend students is kicking the can down the road.
My submission to the Heher Commission into higher education and training, established in 2016, was three-pronged. The first was that higher education must be free and accessible to any and all deserving children. The second was it is illegal and probably unconstitutional to seek money for university entry from a student. This constitutes denial to education by the state to a deserving individual. The third was raising taxes to cover all students to enter university. To this end, I argued that to build a nation we must make a pledge to our youth that the doors of learning are open and from them we need answers to what South Africa they, as students, desire. After 15 cohorts thereon, the country should be poised for a difference, but our minimalist approach has returned the ghost that haunted us in 2015. The evidence is clear: for the tribe to survive, the nation must be taxed.
I keep rabbits, and nowhere is it better illustrated that for the nation to survive tribalism must die. When a female rabbit is due to give birth, it prepares materials to make the nest comfortable for birthing the next generation. All contribute fur to lay the nest. This is not voluntary. The mother-to-be uses her sharp canines to pluck it out without negotiation. In the process, some rabbits are wounded. Once there is a squicking sound in the rabbit kraal I know a new harvest is coming. Regarding taxes, it would be nice if the government did as mother to build human resources.
The needle is not moving on dismal progression among blacks since the dawn of democracy. Why are whites enjoying better employment outcomes, with an unemployment rate four times lower than the national average? The answer is simple. Thirty-five percent of whites have a degree compared with 5% of blacks. Whites make up only 10% of the population compared with blacks at 54%. Twenty percent of whites enjoy tertiary education compared with 7% of blacks.
Free tertiary education is a must, and increasing the quantum of black graduates a priority. But this is impossible to achieve. While it is true that the number of blacks with degrees has grown from 5,000 a year in the 70s to almost more than 12 times this number, progression has deteriorated to a level that's become an attempt to fill a leaking bucket. The progression ratio from matric to starting a degree among blacks relative to whites was 1:1.2. That has now declined deleteriously to 1:6. This is how wasteful it has become to teach blacks. Yet the statistics are not a reflection of black performance. They are a reflection of our neoliberal, minimalist policies on investment. At this rate, blacks will never achieve the graduate and tertiary professional percentage enjoyed by whites. Not in a million years, because the game is rigged by our policies. Without a demographic education profile among the black population that is equivalent to that of its white counterpart, democracy as the distributor of material benefits to society will remain a pipe dream for the former. The protests at Wits are a reminder of the omnipresence of this Gwara-Gwara scenario.
The mother-to-be rabbit will have none of this foolishness regarding the future of her newborns. She tears into the fur of everyone to contribute to guaranteeing the survival of a thriving rabbit nation. For that to happen, the tribe must die. Let us learn from rabbits.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.
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