Current Edition >> Archives Section >> Leading Stories >> 16-31 May 2006

Skills gap is hitting SA - and the Free State - for a six

• Johann Dannhauser

The ambivalence in the acute skills gap in South Africa is hitting the country increasingly hard and in the same way also doing the Free State down. The fact is that on one hand SA's current burgeoning economy urgently needs much more skilled persons in public services, such as hospitals, schools, etc, in municipalities and in the private sector in the form of engineers, doctors, nurses, computer specialists, etc. However, on the other hand, the extremes to which the policies of affirmative action is driven, is causing both a skills flight out of the country and a deliberate negligence of the still available skills in the country.
Press reports of late show the SA Government on a "shopping spree"- as one journalist put it - for skilled people. The government is "aggressively" hiring health care officials as it moves to plug the brain drain of qualified health care personnel, says national Health Department press releases. There has to be a "skills revolution" proclaimed Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka recently. Professional skills are desperately needed as the country "moves into higher economic gear" she declared.
Not surprisingly so, because statistics from sources all over indicate that in some economic sectors the loss of skills is virtually irreparable. Meanwhile, while the government expresses an intention to "broaden its skills acquisition programme", a cursory perusal of the employment section of the country's newspapers reveals blatant government chicanery.
At the request of the SA Business Times, the research organization DMA announced that more than 70% of all positions advertised in the Business Times Careers section of the newspaper were for government or parastatal jobs. The public sector accounted for 7 570 jobs advertised between January and March of this year, compared with the private sector's 3 114. In virtually every one of these advertisement it is stated that the employer must adhere to the government's employment equity policy – for what that exactly means.
From universities to parastatals like Eskom, the CSIR and the Human Sciences Research Council, to government departments and municipalities, the message is the same. If you're white, don't bother applying. For instance recently the Dept. of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning advertised for a Specialist Town and Regional Planner. The ad declared "the department intends to promote representivity with the filling of the post. Kindly indicate gender, race and disability status to facilitate the process." Significantly, the ad says the post has been advertised before. Clearly there weren't too many takers, given the restrictions.
On the same page, the Saudi International Petrochemical Company advertised for a Business Development Specialist and a Process Engineer. All that interested the employer were the qualifications and suitability of prospective candidates. In another ad, a Saudi food company advertised for a series of highly-specialised jobs where, the ad declared unambiguously, "highly competitive financial packages will be tailored to attract the best talent available". It is significant that these international companies now advertise aggressively in SA's newspapers. They realize the ambivalence of the SA government's discriminatory policy and they are cashing in. Even the Botswana Bureau of Standards advertised for a Director who is competent for the job. There are no race, gender or other preferences mentioned in the job ad.
No wonder the cream of South Africans – like the rest all first class citizens - are being poached overseas. And why not? Why bother to apply when your chances of getting the job locally are virtually nil? Even qualified coloured people are now being sidelined. In a recent landmark court judgement, a coloured engineer who applied for a job and was rejected in place of a black whose qualifications were of a lower standard did not win his case in court after he complained of unfair discrimination.
The results are devastating. It is for instance estimated that nearly 24 000 South African medical professionals are working in the developed, English-speaking areas of the world. A national Human Resources report published a week ago revealed that apart from a search for greener pastures, the health professionals "were mainly frustrated and pushed to leave the country".
South Africa's IT performance is slipping. The World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report for 2005/6 ranked South Africa 90th in a list of 115 countries with regard to the availability of scientists and engineers. There is a huge shortage of air traffic controllers in South Africa. They are being lured overseas and not enough people are undergoing training to replace them, according to the trade union Solidarity.
There is also a shortage of between 1 200 and 2 000 engineers in South Africa at present. 98% of construction companies complain about the shortage, yet they are mostly inveigled into advertising on an employment equity basis.
This all adds up to a tremendous so-called brain drain from South Africa. Looking at various websites on the Internet as well as the presence of South Africans in various countries, then it could be reasonably accepted that the number of South Africans at present abroad for a period of at least two years amounts to some 2 million. In London alone it is estimated that some 1 million South Africans reside – they inter alia publish at least two SA newspapers weekly, fill three NG congregations and present the annual Ukkasie SA Festival.
Then there are large numbers or even colonies of South Africans resident in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, etc., while in almost in every country in the world South Africans to a larger or lesser extent are to be found on a residential basis.
The damage to South Africa manifests in the fact that about all of these people are highly skilled and / or are in the prime of their productive economic life. It is calculated that each such emigration case has led directly or indirectly to the loss of about 10 unskilled jobs in SA. If, however, this figure is conservatively put at 6, then it means a loss of some 12 million employment opportunities in SA! The financial implications of this are enormous and according to a Unisa study amounts to some R3 billion per annum.
Also in the Free State there is just about no town not having the experience of residents having moved abroad. The result is that the Free State economy, one of the smallest amongst the nine provinces is also being hard hit. It is thus clear that the economic growth rate and average standard of living in the province, could otherwise have been considerably higher, with the unemployment rate considerably lower.
What is also apparent, is that South Africans abroad are entrepreneurial and economic highly active. Many of those earn astronomical salaries, while others have built up in their new countries big businesses with high turnovers – largely a further financial blow to SA.
This is the ambivalence of the current acute skills gap in South Africa. The solution lies obviously in a turnaround of the situation, with the first indispensable step recall of the entire affirmative process. Much debate can be conducted on this subject, but the long and the short of the story is that it is causing much more harm than what it rectifies.