The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has done South Africa a big favour in putting the spotlight on some of the many elephants in the room of South African politics.
IFP MP Liezl van der Merwe plans to introduce draft legislation to ration jobs, in terms of which businesses would be forced to prioritise South Africans over foreign nationals.
The proposed bill requires that a certain percentage or a quota (80:20) for certain skills can go to foreigners who are in the country legally, but with most jobs being reserved for South Africans.
‘We are not saying that foreign nationals cannot access job opportunities in SA. What we are saying is that it’s a reality that the department of home affairs and the department of employment and labour do not have capacity to enforce our immigration laws,’ said Van der Merwe.
Van der Merwe said there was no reliable data on how many migrants or undocumented foreign nationals were living or working in the country. ‘But when you go to institutions or restaurants you often find that you don’t get one South African or there is one South African employed in the establishment.’ On this anecdotal evidence Van Der Merwe bases her proposal .
She said the party would consult its own constituency and various industries, which may include Uber drivers and people in the hospitality industry.
‘The call will be “SA jobs for SA people”, thereby ensuring that the limited jobs that are available in SA will be opened up for South African people first, whether it’s people looking for jobs as a waiter, in the hair salon or in the trucking industry.’
Van der Merwe argued that there was international best practice on this call and cited countries like Nigeria, Angola and Ghana, whose president recently announced that jobs generated by local entrepreneurship would be reserved for locals.
‘I would argue very strongly that this is not xenophobic, but I would say that our proposal would actually solve the xenophobic attacks. The argument of our people is that foreign nationals are taking our jobs, but once you bring about a more structured way of employing foreign nationals and South Africans, and you’ve got a proper quota system which prioritises South Africans while leaving room for foreign nationals to work and prosper in SA, it would eliminate some of the xenophobic attacks we have seen in the past.’
IFP chief whip Narend Singh supported the same jingoistic notion, and added: ‘If we are going to exacerbate the unemployment of South Africans by employing people from outside the country to do tasks that we could perform, then I think we are going on a dangerous path.’
The first elephant in this room, given the position of the IFP MPs, is that our borders are porous, and Department of Home Affairs (DHA) officials are ineffective and mostly corrupt. Thus we don’t know how many migrants are in the country. This has an impact on the provision of basic services – local and provincial governments have to plan and budget without the most basic of information.
Estimates of legal and illegal migrants have ranged from hundreds of thousands to millions. The government just doesn’t know.
Many South Africans assume immigrants have entered the country illegally, and ‘take jobs’ or commit crime.
The second elephant is the minimum wage. Institute of Race Relations (IRR) CEO Dr Frans Cronjé warned in 2017 that implementation of the minimum wage would be a disaster.
The national minimum wage is R20 an hour, or R3 500 per month. Supporters of the minimum wage argued that higher wages ‘may’ spur more economic activity, thereby limiting any job losses or other negative effects on the economy due to this wage. But the economy is deteriorating at such a rate and joblessness is at such a crisis point that it’s unlikely that this thesis is borne out.
Dr Cronjé pointed out that South Africa’s labour-market absorption and participation rates are extremely low – particularly for less-skilled people. The absorption rate of below 50% is significantly below international norms. Minimum wage increases may have a positive effect in labour markets where demand for new workers is likely to match or exceed supply, such as in Britain.
On the expanded definition of unemployment, one in three working-age South Africans are unemployed. The minimum wage is a barrier to getting onto the first rung of that ladder.
Employment in mining and manufacturing has been falling steadily over the past 20 years: employment in mining has fallen by 29% since 1990. Employment in manufacturing has fallen by 26% over the same period.
South Africa introduced this new minimum wage amid extremely low levels of economic growth and investment. Since 2013, South Africa’s rate of economic growth has diverged from that of the global economy – domestic policy mistakes have reduced the competitiveness of the economy.
Businesses, mostly small, struggle to pay the minimum wage. They are likely to do with as few employees as possible, or flout the law and pay less than the minimum wage to those who just want a job. Big business, however, is more likely to be able to absorb the additional costs.
We have zero percent growth, which will result in increasing retrenchments in the private sector. No unskilled jobs are being created, but both unskilled and skilled jobs are being shed. Yet we must comply with a minimum wage. It’s lunacy.
The last and biggest elephant in the room is the notion that foreigners ‘take our jobs from us’. Of course, they don’t take jobs from people; South Africans are not fired from jobs because an employer wants to hire foreigners who will work for less than the minimum wage. For one thing, our labour laws are there to protect people from that.
Employers hire foreigners for two possible reasons, either because they are willing to work for lower wages and/or they work harder.
A colleague has been doing ‘informal’ research among the Uber drivers he’s met recently. Most of them are foreigners and many also hold down second jobs or have created other businesses. You can’t achieve this unless you are prepared to work very hard.
The recent dreadful attacks on foreign truck drivers and the destruction of trucks and goods have brought this issue into sharp focus. The African Truck Drivers’ Association has justified these attacks on the basis that foreigners are being employed over South Africans. As with most xenophobic attacks, some locals have been victims.
Truck owners have reportedly denied that they employ foreign nationals so that they can pay them meagre wages. They employ foreigners who are documented and legal, and pay them the same as South Africans.
Truck driving needs experience and specific skills; if truck owners don’t find suitably qualified South Africans, they employ foreigners.
If it’s correct that employers don’t pay foreign truckers less, why don’t they employ locals? Do South Africans suffer from a form of ‘entitlement’ as a result of apartheid that leads to an expectation that they shouldn’t be expected to make the effort?
Unfortunately, persecution does not make for exceptionalism in the job market.
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