South Africa's Lack of Skills
This country apparently has a skills problem. We've been told that skilled labour is virtually non-existent. This has been blamed more often than not on affirmative action which according to the enlightend ones:
I must first state that I DO NOT believe that there is a skills deficit in this country. I felt completely betrayed when news reports intimated that the deputy president sees the need of coopting retired skilled (read white) labour due to poor service delivery at local government level. The government is completely to blame for this. EE is basically ensuring that the labour force accurately reflects the demography of this nation. And let's not kid ourselves into believing that race never played a part in company's recruitment pre-1994.
I have had the opportunity to experience the two South Africas that the President has mentioned. The goverment school I attended up to 1993 had scarce resources, I had to use my imagination during the science periods. The school newspaper I was an editor of was put together by photocopier and staples and sometimes that ate into my own pocket shallow as it was.
Come 1994 and I was transported to a predominatly white school (former model c) replete with sports grounds to rival Wembly, state-of-art science labs (to me atleast) and a glossy school magazine. It seems where educating the white child was concernded the government's pockets were deep indeed.
I then had a stint first at an HBU then a HWU, we've got more acronyms in this country than we have proper words! The differences were amazing, the most telling though and which relates to the subject of this blog is the number of companies that were involved in the graduate recruitment programme. I can count in one hand the number of companies that would participate at the HBU's GRP, but at the HWU the campus was awash with recruiters.
Unless there was a policy tied to penalties I don't believe SA business would be much inclined to change.
There are more than enough black people with the requisite skills to efficiently and effectively run a municipality. It's just that in this country and this government unless you have some political pull you have no chance of being recruited. The government should stop making political appointments and recruit the most skilled black candidate that's out there.
As for the brain drain - the white South Africans in the UK that I know of are either "nail technicians" or waitors and if that can be said of the majority of them then they are most welcome to leave.
This country apparently has a skills problem. We've been told that skilled labour is virtually non-existent. This has been blamed more often than not on affirmative action which according to the enlightend ones:
- has replaced skilled(read white) personnel with unskilled people
- has driven the brain drain
I must first state that I DO NOT believe that there is a skills deficit in this country. I felt completely betrayed when news reports intimated that the deputy president sees the need of coopting retired skilled (read white) labour due to poor service delivery at local government level. The government is completely to blame for this. EE is basically ensuring that the labour force accurately reflects the demography of this nation. And let's not kid ourselves into believing that race never played a part in company's recruitment pre-1994.
I have had the opportunity to experience the two South Africas that the President has mentioned. The goverment school I attended up to 1993 had scarce resources, I had to use my imagination during the science periods. The school newspaper I was an editor of was put together by photocopier and staples and sometimes that ate into my own pocket shallow as it was.
Come 1994 and I was transported to a predominatly white school (former model c) replete with sports grounds to rival Wembly, state-of-art science labs (to me atleast) and a glossy school magazine. It seems where educating the white child was concernded the government's pockets were deep indeed.
I then had a stint first at an HBU then a HWU, we've got more acronyms in this country than we have proper words! The differences were amazing, the most telling though and which relates to the subject of this blog is the number of companies that were involved in the graduate recruitment programme. I can count in one hand the number of companies that would participate at the HBU's GRP, but at the HWU the campus was awash with recruiters.
Unless there was a policy tied to penalties I don't believe SA business would be much inclined to change.
There are more than enough black people with the requisite skills to efficiently and effectively run a municipality. It's just that in this country and this government unless you have some political pull you have no chance of being recruited. The government should stop making political appointments and recruit the most skilled black candidate that's out there.
As for the brain drain - the white South Africans in the UK that I know of are either "nail technicians" or waitors and if that can be said of the majority of them then they are most welcome to leave.
posted by ZamaZizi at 10:46 AM
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