HOW GNU WORSENED YOUTH'S PLIGHT
Image: Ron Lach/Pexels
THE 46.1% unemployment rate among young people, the worst in the world, is proof that the Government of National Unity (GNU) has no plans to address the crisis, say political analysts.
Monday marked 49 years since the 1976 Soweto Uprising where scores of youth protested against Afrikaans being enforced as the exclusive medium of instruction in African schools.
Unemployment among young people dominated Monday's commemoration, with questions being raised about the effectiveness of the GNU since its establishment about a year ago following the May 2024 elections.
Young people between the ages of 15 and 34 make up just over half of South Africa's working-age population, about 20.9 million people.
The latest data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey shows that more than half of young people aged between 18 and 34 are unemployed. Deputy President Paul Mashatile conceded on Monday that this is one of the highest levels the country has ever seen, and it is of grave concern
University of the Free State politics lecturer, Sanet Solomons said unemployment and access to quality education remained a challenge as hundreds of schools remain understaffed and under-resourced.
'This is detrimental to those that show promise as their environmental challenges will overshadow their capabilities, leaving them stuck in a cycle of poverty. To date thousands of graduates still have not managed to access the workforce; while some earn a minimum wage that can barely cover their household expenses amid the rising cost of living. Thus, reinforcing the sentiment that very few opportunities exist for this segment of society. Many expected a different outcome or better opportunities under a government of national unity, but these hopes have been dashed as the youth still struggles decades later. As the country commemorates this day, it should be mindful of those who live in poverty with limited access to opportunities. Better needs to be done for them," she said.
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Political analyst professor Sipho Seepe said the GNU had prioritised 'nothing beyond spending an inordinate amount of time trying to justify its existence'.
'Last year was all about internecine bickering. This stems from major flaws in foundations. The ANC's share of the vote declined by a humongous 17 percent in one electoral cycle. This is a damning statement than Ramaphosa's version that says the voters wanted political parties to work together. On the other hand, the DA is on record in ensuring that the demise of the ANC happens pretty soon. There is no love lost between the ANC and the DA. Under the ANC-DA coalition, unemployment among the youth continues to skyrocket to unmanageable levels.'
He said the ANC of Ramaphosa has not only failed but has reversed whatever gains were made in the last 30 years.
'So there is nothing that the youth should expect from it beyond revolutionary sounding statements signifying nothing,' said Seepe.
Addressing the National Youth Day commemoration, in Potchefstroom, North West on Monday, Mashatile said was also deeply worrying was the growing number of young people who are not in education, employment, or training.
'The current figure stands at about 3.8 million. Among 15–24-year-olds, 37.1% fall into this category, with young women being slightly more affected than young men. If we look at the wider age group of 15–34 years, the rate is even higher at 45.1%. Even our graduates are struggling, with nearly 1 in 4 graduates (23.9%) struggling to gain employment. This is more than just an economic issue. It is a moral emergency. We must fix the structural challenges in our economy to address inequality and skills mismatch between education and what the job market needs.'
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Journalists like Stoddard should therefore be more careful when stating that the 2025 work reflects a 'significantly larger sum' than previous estimates. On trophy hunting alone, this is clearly untrue. Simply combining the two figures (biltong and trophy) and attaching a multiplier effect to them is dubious economics and not comparing apples with apples. The 2025 Van der Merwe paper begins with a bit of history in the literature review about private wildlife ownership in South Africa and repeats a 2005 figure that about 20 million hectares of wild landscape is currently under private ownership in South Africa through roughly 9,000 'game' farms. By contrast, state land under conservation is eight million hectares, of which the Kruger National Park accounts for at least a quarter. Erroneous assumptions An underlying assumption that permeates much of the literature that Van Der Merwe and Saayman cite, and that they themselves seem to uncritically accept, is that this private wild land would automatically convert to nature-destructive agriculture if hunting were removed as a revenue option. This is an untested assumption, useful as a rhetorical device to rationalise hunting but useless as a means of ascertaining truth. Moreover, these 9,000 farms are often internally fragmented and not joined up (except in the case of the Associated Private Nature Reserves on the western boundary of the Kruger Park, where the community surveys were run to show opposition to trophy hunting). They are, therefore, hardly an unmitigated good, and many have a poor record of managing elephants and lions. None of this is recognised by the authors. Flawed methodology The most concerning thing about the Van Der Merwe paper is the methodology: Self-reporting by hunters: First, the results are drawn from a 'web-based, self-administered questionnaire' distributed by the Sustainable Use Coalition. This is a coalition of about 150,000 people committed to the idea that placing an extractive value on an animal is the only thing that should determine whether that animal is worth keeping or not. In other words, 'if it pays, it stays'. A corollary problem is that those who complete the survey have a vested interest in the outcome – in other words, those who hunt have an interest in overstating their self-reported expenditure to maintain pro-hunting policies; Insufficient sample size: The sample size is extremely small. Only 414 hunters responded to the survey out of a possible 6,242 international hunters who came to South Africa between August 2022 and October 2023 (the period under consideration after Covid). That's a paltry 6.6% of the total. The authors write that 'the international questionnaire asked respondents to recall their spending during their last hunting safari to South Africa'. They did this on the assumption that most international hunters only visit South Africa once a year. Of course, what they're asking for is self-reported thumb-sucking. There is literally no verification of the data or any attempt to ascertain whether what is reported is true; Wrong assumption that all hunters spend equally: After discounting for the fact that a portion of the expenditure does not accrue to South Africa, the authors estimated that each hunter in their sample spent an average of $27,170. They then simply multiplied that amount by 6,242, as if their 6.6% sample was somehow representative of the entire population. This is how they get the figure of $169.6-million; and Dubious multiplier: The authors use the latest Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) to calculate a 'multiplier effect' of hunters' expenditure. This is a table that estimates the induced and indirect impact on the economy of every dollar spent. Using an overall production multiplier of 2.97 across all sectors affected by hunting expenditure, they calculate that total spending of $856.6-million (trophy and biltong combined) equates to economic significance of $2.543-billion. My problem with this kind of hit job is that it suffers from weak economics, which any peer reviewer should have picked up. The SAM is deficient when applied to ecologically and ethically contentious activities like trophy hunting because it depends on a mechanistic conception of the economy as a closed circular flow of income and fails to account for the real biophysical opportunity costs of depleting irreplaceable nature (especially of ecosystem engineers like elephants). It further treats all monetary transactions as equally virtuous, thereby granting the same economic 'weight' to a trophy fee for killing a lion as to expenditures on education or ecosystem restoration. This reductionist metric ignores the sacrificed regenerative and intrinsic value of biodiversity. Opportunity cost assumptions The authors argue that $2.5-billion is the 'loss to the economy should this activity totally cease to exist'. But that is sheer unwarranted speculation, along with the concluding claim that 'reduction in hunting tourism activities will negatively impact land use for wildlife as landowners will revert back to alternative agricultural activities such as domesticated livestock or crop farming to generate revenue, which will not benefit wildlife and conservation'. The authors have done no economics work to demonstrate this at all. All they have done is make a dubious claim that hunting is worth $2.5-billion to the South African economy. That does not give anyone licence to claim that removing hunting would render that land suddenly devoid of any biodiversity. The bottom line is that the very communities that hunters say they benefit are the same communities telling us they don't want it, and the figures to rationalise this extractive activity are clearly overblown. DM Dr Ross Harvey is Director of Harvey Economics Pty Ltd.
