President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged that South Africa will not be able to reach the goal of reducing the unemployment rate to 6% by 2030 as outlined in the National Development Plan unless the country did something “extraordinary”.

Ramaphosa was addressing government, business, labour and community organisations at the start of the two-day Jobs Summit on Thursday at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand.

The summit is meant to bring stakeholders together to devise a coordinated framework to tackle unemployment.

The different social roleplayers signed a framework agreement designed to create an additional 275 000 direct jobs a year. This is over and above the jobs that would have been created in the economy without these interventions — on average about 300 000 a year.

South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to 27.2% of the labour force in the second quarter of the year. The rate of unemployment amongst the youth was at 38.8% compared to 17.9% for adults.

A critical part of the framework agreement would be efforts to retain current jobs while creating new jobs, said Ramaphosa.

“All social partners have committed themselves to concrete steps to avoid retrenchments and support struggling companies,” he added.

Ramaphosa also mentioned that the business labour and community social partners had agreed to revive and improve the training layoff scheme which was introduced in response to the 2008 global crisis. 

Agriculture and manufacturing

Ramaphosa also said the framework had plans to promote more local procurement and exports to create jobs.

“This is the time to put South Africa first,” said Ramaphosa to a room of applause.

“This we say, not in an arrogant way like it is said elsewhere.