Cosatu on latest jobs figures: The capitalist system isn't working

Statistics South Africa released the figures for the first quarter of 2019 on Tuesday, showing that the country’s unemployment rate rose by half a percentage point to 27.6 percent, underlining the challenge facing President Cyril Ramaphosa.

 Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Palma says the next government should release that the capitalist system is not working and has reached its limits.

"A government that hands over its developmental agenda to the private sector is bound to come up with these results. If you think you have a developmental framework in place you then need to make sure you have a developmental state that will implement that developmental framework, to just hand over everything to the private sector and hope for the best you are bond to actually experience what we are experiencing.”

He says the number of unemployed young people is still concerning and questions need to be asked of the education system. 

"The education system itself is yet to be drastically reduced, which is why in all the developing countries we have the highest unemployment among young people. Even the free education we talking about no one is looking at what are those students studying. Are they studying something that will be needed in this economy? Or they will come out with qualifications that are redundant that the economy no longer needs."