Cape Town - As the year draws to a close and with the festive season looming, South Africans across the board face a rocky time, says Terry Bell in his latest labour wrap.
He points out that, not so long ago, it was officially said that a 6% economic growth rate was necessary just to keep pace with job creation for the youth entering the jobs market.
This week, Bell says, there has been praise for the fact that our gross domestic product (GDP) grew to 1.4% in the third quarter. Growth figures of this magnitude, he says, spell misery for many and problems for most as unemployment will grow.
Clearly, as the labour movement has maintained for more than a decade, the government’s liberal - “trickle down” - policies, from GEAR onward, have not worked and are not working. Bell says this crisis has come on top of the bitter infighting in and around Cosatu, along with relative chaos reigning in several state-owned enterprises, most notably the Post Office and Eskom.
This, he says, is no time for simplistic analysis or indulging in prejudices. There is a need for everyone to try to ascertain and analyse facts and to act accordingly.
He quotes the embattled Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim, who told him this week that even the worst situations could produce the finest solutions; that people facing the abyss tend to think and act in a manner that does not do harm.
Bell admits that many of these matters are confused and complex and, as a result, he intends dealing with only one aspect of the current turmoil in his Inside Labour column: the politics underlying the Cosatu fracas and who the greatest potential loser may be.
WATCH:
* Add your voice to the big labour debate or simply ask Terry a labour question.
YOUR VOICE:
A peek beyond awful, dangerous, bad
Labour leaders too self serving
Who is really representing the poor?
Can Numsa appeal expulsion?
What is HR's role in dispute hearings?
- Terry Bell is a political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.