Democratic Alliance (DA) leader geordyn hill-lewis says South Africa's deepening unemployment crisis demands a sense of urgency and structural reforms, not just investment conferences.
chairman Cyril Ramaphosa Recently defended the effectiveness of recent investment summits saying that commitments are gradually translating into employment opportunities.
However, Hill-Lewis has criticized Ramaphosa's approach, pointing to Quarterly Labor Force Survey data showing that 345,000 jobs were lost in a single quarter, bringing the national unemployment rate to 32.7%.
He believes that South Africa's unemployment crisis is not inevitable but a direct result of old ideological blockages and political choices.
Hill-Lewis pointed to the DA's governance record in Cape Town, where the official unemployment rate declined, which the DA leader said proved that efficient, pro-business governance promoted job creation.
He is urging the Government of National Unity (GNU) to more urgently accelerate ongoing reforms in energy, logistics, water and other infrastructure.
He said the national government's policies have historically been weak, but the current coalition is an opportunity to take the country's development path forward.
He argued that while the national government often talked warmly about attracting foreign and domestic investment, its actual policies and administrative failures made investing in South Africa unnecessarily difficult.
He said, “Businesses are asked to invest in a country where ports do not function properly, rail is unreliable, crime is out of control, many municipalities are failing and electricity remains very expensive and unreliable.”
Hill-Lewis said the direct result of these systemic failures is visible in the country's disastrous unemployment data.
South Africa's unemployment crisis remains the deepest globally.
Hill-Lewis blamed economic failures on the African National Congress (ANC), claiming that weak governance, failing municipalities, neglected infrastructure maintenance and corruption in ANC municipalities had suppressed business growth and stifled job creation.
In contrast, the Western Cape and Cape Town offered a blueprint for economic resilience, he said.
Hill-Lewis highlighted that the Western Cape has an unemployment rate of approximately 20%, which is much better than the national average of 32.7% and that Cape Town consistently leads other South African metropolises in job creation, service delivery and investor confidence.
Hill-Lewis attributed this to a “deliberate focus on the fundamentals of governance”.