*18 February 2025*
*SAFTU Statement on the Fourth Quarter 2024 Labour Force Survey – 18 February 2025*
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) notes with deep concern the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for Q4 2024, released today by Statistics South Africa. The data confirms what SAFTU has consistently warned: there is nothing to celebrate. The expanded unemployment rate remains catastrophically high at 41.9%, indicating no significant improvement in the dire jobs crisis.
Even more troubling is that six out of nine provinces continue to suffer unemployment rates above 40%. This reinforces the deep regional inequalities and the failure of economic policies to address the desperate conditions facing millions of workers and job seekers across the country.
Once again, the face of unemployment remains the same: Black people, women, youth, rural communities, and those living in the former Bantustans continue to be disproportionately affected. Decades after the fall of apartheid, the geography of poverty and unemployment remains unchanged, with millions in historically neglected areas still suffering from a lack of jobs, infrastructure, and economic opportunities. The capitalist system has deliberately trapped rural workers and those in former Bantustans in a cycle of underdevelopment, landlessness, and mass unemployment.
The reality is that rural areas and the former Bantustans—where millions of our people still reside—are economic dead zones due to deliberate historical underdevelopment and the failure of the government to implement policies that uplift these areas. The agricultural sector, once a major employer, has been decimated by land dispossession, corporate farming monopolies, and the failure to support small-scale farmers and cooperative agriculture. Instead of reversing these injustices, the state’s neoliberal austerity measures have worsened the crisis, cutting rural development programs and public sector jobs that serve these communities.
*Neoliberalism and Budget Cuts Will Not Create Jobs—They Destroy Jobs!*
The government, under the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU), continues to champion neoliberal economic policies that actively undermine job creation. The structural adjustment programs dictated by Treasury—through budget cuts, retrenchments, and privatisation—are not solving unemployment but worsening it.
Instead of expanding public sector employment, the state is reducing the size of the public sector through early retirement strategies, leading to fewer police officers on the streets, and diminished healthcare, education, and social services. This downsizing occurs despite South Africa’s public sector ratios per population being significantly below international standards.
Moreover, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has been critically exposed due to inadequate equipment and funding. Recent clashes with M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo resulted in the tragic loss of 14 South African soldiers, highlighting the military’s lack of proper resources and planning.
The SANDF’s decline is further evidenced by systemic issues, including obsolete equipment, inadequate maintenance, and budget cuts. Reports indicate that only a fraction of the Air Force’s aircraft are operational, and the Navy’s capabilities are severely compromised.
*SAFTU’s Core Demand: Overhaul the Neo-Colonial Economic Structure!*
SAFTU reaffirms its principal demand that the neo-colonial structure of the South African economy must be completely overhauled. The current economic framework remains one where the mining, finance, and energy complex dominates, excluding the black majority and the working class from real ownership and control.
We demand a new economic model based on industrialisation, redistribution, and social ownership. This means:
*1. Breaking the Domination of the Mining-Finance-Energy Complex*:
• The economy cannot remain trapped in its colonial structure, where a handful of white-owned corporations extract wealth while the black majority remains landless and excluded.
• We must industrialise and diversify the economy to create new industries that absorb labour and ensure economic inclusion for the working class.
*2. Nationalisation and Worker Control*:
• Key sectors, including mining, energy, banking, and logistics, must be nationalised and placed under democratic worker control to serve the people, not private profits.
• The state must regulate and formalise the so-called Zama-Zama economy to ensure that black people benefit from the country’s natural resources instead of being criminalised for trying to survive.
*3. Land Redistribution and End to Landlessness*:
• The apartheid land theft has not been reversed! We demand a radical programme of land redistribution to give land to black workers, small-scale farmers, and rural communities.
• This must be accompanied by massive state investment in rural economies, ensuring access to resources, infrastructure, and markets.
*4. Rebuilding Domestic Industry for Jobs*:
• We cannot continue as an economy that extracts raw materials and exports them, only to import finished goods at high costs.
• We demand a state-led programme of industrialisation, prioritising manufacturing, agro-processing, and technology to create jobs and empower the working class.
*SAFTU’s Demands Against Budget Cuts and Austerity*
Ahead of the 2025 Budget Speech, SAFTU demands an immediate reversal of austerity and the adoption of a bold, worker-centered economic program:
1. Stop the Job Cuts! The government must halt the reduction of public sector personnel, including in healthcare, education, policing, and social services. No more retrenchments in the public sector!
2. Mass Public Works Programmes must be rolled out to create millions of decent, full-time jobs in infrastructure, housing, renewable energy, and rural development. These jobs must prioritise historically neglected areas, including rural communities and former Bantustans.
3. End the Hollowing Out of Public Services! The reduction in public sector workforce is an attack on service delivery. SAFTU demands adequate staffing and resources to improve public services and meet international standards.
4. Nationalise Key Industries to place strategic sectors like mining, energy, and finance under democratic worker control, ensuring that resources benefit all South Africans, not just the elite.
5. Abolish Neoliberal Fiscal Policies! We reject the obsession with budget deficit reduction at the expense of job creation. The priority must be full employment, not serving the interests of financial markets.
6. Massive Investment in Rural Economies and Former Bantustans! While the world rapidly advances into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, our people in rural areas, former Bantustans, informal settlements, and townships are being left behind. They still lack access to the First, Second, and Third Industrial Revolutions, with no basic infrastructure—no roads, no dams, inadequate schools without electricity, water, or laboratories, and some still relying on latrine toilets. The government must rebuild local economies by supporting small-scale farming, cooperatives, agro-processing, and sustainable industries in rural areas, and by providing essential infrastructure to integrate these communities into the modern economy.
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