JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- With almost 1 million jobs that have been lost in the South African economy since 2019, the bloodbath would continue until the end of the year, according to experts and unions.
Concerns about the stagnant economic growth and employment crisis come after Statistics SA's report revealed a rise in unemployment which increased to 29 percent during the second quarter of this year, meaning 6.7 million people are unemployed.
Somadoda Fikeni of the University of South Africa told Xinhua on Thursday that an "urgent solution" was required to solve the crisis.
"This simply means we are in a deep crisis. The country should treat this as a matter of urgency," he said.
With most young people being impacted, Fikeni said this could be disastrous.
"Young people have the energy to be good. They can also be destructive," he added.
This sentiment was shared by Sizwe Pamla of the largest labor federation Cosatu.
"This is a recipe for disaster. Countries with less than the unemployment rate of South Africa have had revolutions," Pamla told Xinhua.
After taking over from Jacob Zuma last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa held an investment and jobs summit in an effort to tackle the problems, but it's clear these have not yielded positive results.
Fikeni said a radical change was required to revive the economy.
"I doubt such deep structural challenges in nature can be resolved by meetings of stakeholders. We need radical interventions," he said, adding more attention must be paid to emerging businesses.
"In an economy that is concentrated in few hands, you'll never get the growth of small and medium businesses. We need to emphasize and encourage internal investment," Fikeni added.
Statistics SA report showed that over 21,000 jobs lost in the second quarter of this year were in the finance sector.
The country's largest union in the finance industry Sasbo said more retrenchments are looming.
"Right now, we have received notices from four banks about retrenchments for the next six months. We are expecting more job losses," Sasbo's Secretary General Modime Joe Kokeka told Xinhua.
A total of 36,000 in the mining sector were lost in the second quarter of this year and Cosatu's Pamla said the industry would continue losing jobs.
With the state having high debt levels, Pamla said if nothing changes, the country might be forced to borrow from other institutions.
"The latest statistics bear reflect the jobs bloodbath that we have seen in the mining and banking sectors," Pamla said.
"We have seen no plan from the government to save the mining industry which is hell-bent on replacing workers with machines or simply just retrenching because of the crisis of profits," Pamla said.
