Minister Meth should be ashamed, not “concerned” – IRR

Employment and Labour Minister Nomakhosazana Meth declared herself “gravely concerned” this week about the latest wave of retrenchments hitting South Africa’s economy, citing closures and cutbacks at ArcelorMittal SA, Ford Motor Company SA, Goodyear, and others.

She spoke of interventions such as R417-million in UIF payouts, yet admitted these expensive and desperate measures were not stemming the tide of job destruction.

The reality is that Minister Meth has no right to be concerned – she should be ashamed.

The jobs crisis she now laments is the direct and inevitable consequence of policies that she and her party have championed for years. The ANC’s commitment over many years to central planning, coercive labour laws, minimum wage mandates, and race-based hiring targets has steadily strangled opportunity, shut out entrepreneurs, and driven both investors and employers away.

For well over a decade, the IRR has warned that these anti-growth, anti-jobs measures would lead to exactly this outcome. Here are just some of the many times we raised the alarm:

• "SA must face impact of minimum wage on jobs" – News24
• "Urgent need for labour law reforms to combat rising unemployment" – Daily Maverick
• "EEA will only lead to more job losses" – IRR
• "Minimum wage in an era of joblessness" – Financial Mail
• "SA labour must stop pricing itself out of the global market" – IOL
• "There’s a hole in the job bucket" – IRR media release
• "Draft Employment Equity regulations threaten jobs" – IRR

The IRR’s internationally recognised Blueprint for Growth policy papers, including Generating Jobs and Skills for Prosperity and Growth and Breaking the BEE Barrier to Growth, have spelt out the reforms that could turn this tide: freeing up the labour market, rewarding merit, lowering barriers to entry, and encouraging investment. Governments in the past have ignored these solutions at every turn. This deliberate antagonism to job-creating, pro-growth policies is something South Africans can no longer afford.

Says Hermann Pretorius, IRR head of strategic communications: “Minister Meth’s sudden alarm is theatre. These job losses are not a shock – they are the bill coming due for years of fake transformation and economic sabotage. Instead of crocodile tears, she owes South Africans an apology for defending policies that made it harder to hire, harder to grow, and harder to compete. In fact, she owes South Africans an urgent pro-growth policy pivot.”

The IRR calls on the Government of National Unity to break with failed ANC dogma by:

• Scrapping BEE and demographic quotas that scare off investment
• Halting further minimum wage hikes that lock out the poor and unskilled
• Reforming dismissal laws and bargaining councils to unleash labour-intensive sectors, and
• Putting growth, enterprise, and consumers at the centre of labour policy

Adds Pretorius: “Unemployment is not an unforeseeable, magical consequence of fate. It is the product of bad policy. And until those policies are dismantled, no amount of ministerial concern, state intervention, masterplans, or UIF bailouts will create the jobs South Africa so urgently needs.”

Media contact: Hermann Pretorius IRR Head of Strategic Communications Tel: 079 875 4290 Email: hermann@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za