SA Skills shortage
Dec 10 2007 11:30 PM
By: John Fraser (Presenter), Marius Roodt (Guest)

JOHN FRASER: One of the persistent themes in the South African economy is the skills shortage, and the South African Institute of Race Relations has done some work on this and come to the conclusion that this country faces a dire skills shortage. To tell us about it I’m joined by South African Institute of Race Relations researcher, Marius Roodt. Marius, is this a serious problem?

MARIUS ROODT: We’ve found basically every sector where we need skills, where skilled people are needed; there is a shortage in every one of those sectors – from aviation to accountants to engineers to artisans to teachers – basically every sector in the economy.

JOHN FRASER: That’s the problem - is there a solution?

MARIUS ROODT: In the short term I think we need to look at making it easier to immigrate to South Africa. At the moment we all know what a bureaucracy the Department of Home Affairs is; and South Africa is a relatively difficult country to get into. But that is obviously only a short-term solution, and also there are many other countries which are more attractive to move to than South Africa, so we also need to look at changing perceptions of South Africa abroad. That’s obviously only a short-term solution, I think in the long term we need to look at our education system.

JOHN FRASER: You mention that there are something like 200,000 unemployed tertiary graduates with 36,000 of them holding degrees. You mention that a lot of people graduate without the proper skills in communication and just using the English language, so presumably in the medium term we need, as you say, to get the education system right.

MARIUS ROODT: Yes, that’s the problem. A lot of these people are people with general commerce degrees and so on, and a lot of them are also people who graduated from the historically black universities, who were obviously neglected under apartheid and they still haven’t caught up to historically white universities. We found that generally people who came from historically white universities found work easier than people from historically black universities, regardless of their race.

JOHN FRASER: Is there any way you can take these people - and surely employers should be accepting some responsibility for up-skilling people – can’t they take them in, give them a bit more training and bring them up to the standard they require?

MARIUS ROODT: I think we need to look at that but I think that it’s already starting to happen to an extent – a little while ago it was reported that Edcon, the holding company for Edgars, they’ve started their own skilling people up and so on, and probably we are going to be seeing more of that in the future, until the education system does get sorted out.

JOHN FRASER: Now you’ve got a rather explosive statement in your release – you talk about the current shortage of skills and it’s important to acknowledge the problem, instead of playing the race card at every opportunity. What do you mean by that?

MARIUS ROODT: I was referring to Mr Jimmy Manyi, head of the Commision for Employment Equity when he said the skills shortage is an urban legend, and he’s saying skilled blacks are being ignored. I think it’s dangerous to say things like that because clearly the skills shortage isn’t an urban legend, and I think if we look at a black engineer or a black accountant, a black person with a skill that is needed – I think we’ll find it very hard to find an unemployed black CA in this country.

JOHN FRASER: Now Marius, we’ve got this problem and you’re suggesting that one way forward is that racialised employment legislation should be scrapped. What do you mean by that?

MARIUS ROODT: I think the current way that affirmative action is being implemented, it’s just basically on a quota system which is obviously unacceptable, and the thing is skilled blacks can find work pretty easily if they have skills that are really needed, as I said – engineers, accountants and so on. The thing is employment equity legislation isn’t helping people who are unemployed, beggars, people living in informal settlements and so on, so anybody with a skill they just need to be accepted into the economy, we need to stop having racialised legislation I think.

JOHN FRASER: So are you saying that there’s a pool of skilled white talent that is being held back by this legislation?

MARIUS ROODT: I don’t think we can say that, I think possibly there’s just more of a perception in the country that white skills are needed, which is not true, I don’t think. But I think that is part of the reason why people look at emigrating and so on. The Homecoming Revolution did a survey and they found about 20% of the people they surveyed said they left the country because of affirmative action, even though it’s also pretty hard to find an unemployed white person who’s got a skill that’s needed in the country. I think it’s just more perceptions and so on, and I think in some cases possibly, white people will get held back because of racialised legislation but I don’t think that is the case most of the time.

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