We often heard that we want to create 93000 jobs for Mandela day. It is a very noble thought. Ideally, we want everyone in our country to be employed. This will increase the tax userbase, therefore increase the amount of tax collected from the residents of South Africa, and as a direct result, provide more funds to budget to the various service delivery departments of the country. It is as simple as that. So well done for this initiative.

I have a huge concern about the sustainability of those jobs created. Giving someone something that we call a “piece job” or in some cases, a “peace job” is should not be classified as creating a job! Giving a cencus worker a job to count people in the country should not be classified as creating a job. Jobs created should be sustainable. That same person must still have this particular job in 12 months, 2 years or even 10 years, providing that person is was not fired from the job due to misconduct or incompetence, and has not moved on to greener pastures.

I believe that these figures of Government’s efforts to provide full-time jobs should be documented. Not only that the job was created, but what the scope of the job is. Is it a permanent job or a contract position? Is it a sustainable job?

I am not at liberty to say that these figures are not publicised – I simply don’t know – but after some search on this matter, I was unable to find relevant information about this. In this case, clearly, Google was not my friend, nor was the Department of Labor’s website. If you know of some place to get this information, please post a comment, as I am really interested to see what these figures are REALLY like.