High levels of unemployment with little immediate prospects of being employed are some of the challenges faced by many job seekers in our country. In Gezina, just out the Pretoria CBC, a group of men wait outside a hardware retailer every day hoping to strike it lucky.
Mandla Hlatshwayo (58) is an experienced and qualified carpenter who has been looking for permanent employment since 1995. He feels not enough is being done to either create employment opportunities or to ensure that the climate is conducive for investors to create job.
Hlatshwayo suggests that “piece” jobs started to reduce for him in 2008. “We survive with the little we manage to get on a daily basis. So if I get that five rand for example, I try to use it to provide, but nothing much comes from it. There’s no good life in our homes. This unemployment situation even affects my relationship, the wife sleeps on the far corner of the bed while I sleep on the other. Even with our kids, it’s hunger.”
Hlatshwayo thinks that the reason why he is unable to find work is because of foreigners who have occupied jobs that we would be able to do. “The reason why we don’t have jobs here is because of foreigners. When these foreigners come here they observe what we eat and how we live as we are sitting here in this corner. Then they join us, trying to live like us [as South African job seekers]. As time goes by they start operating in a corrupt way, stealing and messing up everything for us. This then causes fear to the whites who want to hire us.
