I’m always reluctant to advocate for graduates because SA graduates don’t know the country they live in, they don’t understand the challenges it faces and how they can contribute in solving them. They want to be like graduates in Western countries, living soft, but on taxes.

Firstly Higher ed is heavily subsidised but there’s no compulsory national service (CNS). That’s a travesty. Communities would benefit from it and graduates would get work experience. Not to mention building social cohesion.
Why we don’t have at least 1 year CNS is a mystery.

Secondly graduates don’t like going to work in rural areas. They want to live where there’s better infrastructure, especially young graduates. They only go to rural areas when they’re desperate. We really need to change that mindset.

Thirdly, SA graduates don’t like having start up. This is nothing new for the country look at Mandelas generation they had start ups servicing local communities. We need to revive that spirit. Ours is a neocolonial economy that doesn’t value black labour, especially educated one.

Fourthly, the role of professional bodies and unis in acquiring experience is missing here. One way is ensuring that part of the requirements of their members is mentoring young graduates and students in that field. We need unconventional & visionary unis & professional bodies.

It’s as if no one in SA understands the mammoth problems we have and how we have to be innovative in all spheres to solve the structural problems in the economy. The people who carry the disproportionate load are teachers in basic education, it’s no wonder they get disillusioned.

Won’t even touch on the well established business class because they are extracting wealth and profiting even as the country becomes a shell of itself. They hardly if ever have any bone of ensuring things are working. They are the most regressive class in our society!!

Think I have spoken enough about politicians in Africa. If we don’t get out of touch technocrats we get technically incompetent but political influencers who facilitate the loot or act as mafias & debone the shell of a country they are in charge of. We really need to replace them

Lastly, graduates are a tiny minority (not even 10% of the class they started grade 1 with) and my most concern goes to the unemployment non-graduates who get to be structurally unemployed and with every passing year they are unemployed, so do their chances of getting employment.