The local organising committee for the World Cup say they have no knowledge of this, but conceded that they would not be involved anyway because independent contractors are used to either refurbish or build the stadiums.
It wouldn’t surprise me one jot if the construction companies are bringing in North Koreans to finish off the work. As I’ve said before and will say again and again and again, until we re-introduce pure skills training in this country we will keep coming up against the same skills problem.
Because without skills training we’ll still be stuck without the people to do the work.
There have been dire warnings from all sorts of voluntary associations including the Master Builders South Africa, the regional Master Builders Associations, the Engineering Council of South Africa and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.
They’ve all seen the skills shortage coming for years. And they’ve told the Parliamentary Committees over and over again that there is a problem.
So maybe you can tell me why government has done absolutely nothing to effectively rectify the problem?
Fanciful plans such as the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) where between 2010 and 2014 this country hoped to grow at an average rate of 6% have failed dismally.
In 2007, when the plan was announced, the government blamed (as it always does) the shortages of skilled labour on the impact of Apartheid, which provided, says the AsgiSA document, the black, coloured and Indian populations with a deliberately inferior education system.
There certainly is some truth in that statement.
But it was not the Apartheid government that trashed indentureships, apprenticeships or artisan training. It was not the Apartheid government that provided the schooling system that we have today. It is not the Apartheid government that stops more than 70% or 80% of students from getting into a university.
It was the African National Congress (ANC) that did so. And it was the ANC that led South Africa’s mathematics and science education to be the worst of 50 countries surveyed around the world.
It was the ANC that introduced the outcomes-based education system that is failing our youth so badly today.
So let’s stop blaming Apartheid and get on with fixing up this country instead.
And if we don’t have the necessary skills then there are only two options:
- Import the skills
- Train the millions of unemployed people so that they can acquire a skill.
Here’s the difficulty: if people with skills are “imported” from places like Zimbabwe, Kenya, Mozambique or Somalia they quickly become the focus of xenophobic attacks from South Africans who accuse them of “stealing our jobs”.
The South Africans haven’t got the skills, but they want the jobs. What sort of idiotic reasoning is that?
If the skills come from the Far East (such as China, Korea, Malaysia or Taiwan) companies tendering for any infrastructural development work from government or government-owned utilities are penalised because they are not creating local jobs.
Well, guess what, the local people who are unemployed don’t have the skills, don’t want to acquire the skills and prefer to sit around doing nothing than get trained.
Some time ago I wrote an article about the skills training programme being run by a company that makes drywall partitioning. Students accepted for the programme received, from the company, the following:
- A stipend of about R700 a week;
- Free transportation to and from the training centre;
- A free hot meal for lunch;
- Free medical aid;
- And, once the six-month course was successfully completed the tools that they’d been taught to use and had used while being trained were given to them as well.
Some 25 students were enrolled in the first course and, after a month or so, only 11 remained. The rest had collected their wages for the first few weeks and then never returned to work.
And the interesting thing about this was that most of the students who completed the course were women. The men were the layabouts who couldn’t give a damn about acquiring a skill.
The company is still running this course (and there are many others too for scaffolders, formwork, shuttering, and so forth) and time and time again, it is the women who want to work.
So I have absolutely no sympathy for those louts who hang around our townships, loiter on our street corners and hold looting party strikes whenever they can.
These are the useless people of South Africa because they are not prepared to put in the effort, get a skill and then use it.
And when the ANC talks about fanciful plans such as AsgiSA and Jipsa (Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition) and any other acronyms that will crop up from time to time, understand that it’s mostly poppycock being sprouted by a politician trying to justify his or her deployment in a government position.
Until we manage to change the mindset of those thousands of unemployed youths that we have around the country, we will not be able to solve our skills crisis.
And believe me, plugging the gap by importing skills from other nations anywhere else in the world is not going to solve the problem either.
For me the fundamental question is what is government doing to change that mindset of entitlement that allows youths to do nothing and be proud of it?
I certainly do think that some form of legislated community service (like the compulsory military training that existed years ago) must be re-introduced so that when a youngster leaves school he or she must do two years of community service that equips them with a skill of their choice.
A skill like bricklaying, tiling, paving or plastering so that we can build houses that stand up.
A skill that allows all members of our society to contribute to South Africa’s growth.
Not the society that we have today with millions of unemployed and untrained youths who are nothing more than parasites.
*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddy@neomail.co.za.
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Mr Hartdegen for PRESIDENT! – Abrie Venter
As usual this article hit the nail on the head. I am a product of apartheid and I remember all too well how our teachers drilled and grilled us to excel as at that time it was the white man’s world and we had to prove that we were just as good. A huge thank you to the Mr Harmons, Mrs Smiths, Mr Domingo's, Mr Mayet's, Mr Luckay's, we received perhaps an inferior education compared to the whites but when the opportunities opened up many of us were able to communicate and once trained in a particular field, we did our best and showed everyone that we were just as capable like anyone else. We worked and worked hard so when promotions became available we were considered. We did not expect to get in a position because of a quota system, or because we played the racist card, no sir we earned it.
I have a friend who trained at the Coronationville Hospital as a nurse. She has excelled to such an extent that she worked in Oman, she then went to the UK and headed up a physichiatric ward in one of their hospitals. So yes you are right, I don't care if the education I received was inferior back in the day, but it did not stop us from achieving. LAZINESS yes laziness is at the order of today.
Go to a supermarket and take note how the cashiers are laxidazical about what they are doing. There is no pride in doing their jobs. Its almost like they are on a go slow. TRAINING, TRAINING AND MORE TRAINING is what is needed. – Anonymous
True. I am building and all the subbies are foreign. Malawian, Moz, who knows what else. No South Africans – they are too dumb, arrogant and have an aggrieved sense of entitlement. But mainly just too dumb. – Murray Burt
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