Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's warning last week that we need to achieve a sustained 7% growth rate for the next 20 to 30 years if we are to meet the social and economic needs of this county should come as a reality shock to all South Africans.

What is even more shocking is that we show no prospect of meeting even the most basic requirements needed to reach such a target figure. What is required, says Gordhan, is a "humongous national effort" achieved through a "social compact" between labour, business, the social sector and government. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry, because as the whole country can see, even as Gordhan was saying this labour was locked in a deadly war with both government and business, while business and government themselves have a relationship that can best be described as mutual incognizance, while the social sector is out in the cold.

Gordhan says we need a new "national intent" with everyone pursuing an agreed economic path to reach his 7% growth target. But there is no economic agreement anywhere. Business is capitalist, labour Marxist and the government is split between. While the burgeoning poor, now nearly 40% of our total population, are nowhere at all.

Some in the ANC are so-called nationalists, mostly people doing very nicely in business thanks to black economic empowerment (BEE) and too often involvement in endemic corruption. Others are so-called left-wingers, outspokenly critical of BEE and the rampant corruption that goes with it and calling for more government intervention in the economy to direct the private sector towards the still undefined "developmental state." Yet others, such as Julius Malema, are crossover artists, clinging to the coattails of BEE fat-cats while at the same time trying to outflank the SA Communist Party on the left by calling for the nationalisation of the mines, which the SACC seems reluctant to do.

The contradictions are endless. President Zuma is travelling the world almost non-stop, visiting all the major emerging economies, the so-called Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), as well as the older developed countries, trying to drum up foreign investment. But even as he does so his government is going out of its way to undermine confidence in South Africa as an investment venue by sowing doubt about the security of mining rights and threatening to stifle the flow of information through media control mechanisms.

The public service strike has highlighted the lack of any kind of "national intent." The spirit of the new South Africa is everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost. The public service unions are demanding an 8.6% pay increase, which is nearly three times the 3% growth rate the Treasury projects for this year. As government spokesman Themba Maseko has said, to grant that in the current economic climate would make South Africa "the laughing stock of the world."

Even the government's rejected offer of 7% is more than double the inflation rate. As Gordhan has noted, in a situation where the recession has depleted revenues, any increase beyond that will mean cutting back on other services. Which will those be? Most likely welfare services, since they are the softest option with the recipients in no position to strike.

So don't expect a concomitant increase in welfare payments in the next budget. As it is we have 13,8-million people receiving welfare payments from the proceeds of 5-million taxpayers -- one of the highest ratios in the world, and clearly not stretchable. Social grants are running at a whopping R89-billion for the current fiscal year.

The old-age pensioner is likely to have to continue making out on a maximum pension of R1,080 a month -- provided he or she meets the means test of not earning more than a measly R31,296 a year. Because of extended family responsibilities the Department of Welfare estimates that princely sum is currently supporting 1,9 individuals. So sorry, old folks, you can't have more because those people who already have "decent jobs" want another big raise on top of what they got last year.

Imagine living on R1,080 a month and having to give nearly half of it away!

At the other end of the social scale are the youth, about whom Gordhan expressed particular concern in an interview with Engineering News the other day. He pointed out that between four to 6-million youths are currently unemployed, and that 4-million between the ages of 15 and 24 have no immediate work prospects.

The trouble is if you can't get a first-time job -- and 70 percent of our unemployed youth are in that situation -- you won't be able to build a work record. No-one is going to hire an unqualified young person with no work record if that person has to be paid the full "decent wage" plus benefits and because of our labour laws you can't fire him or her without a big hassle if the worker turns out to be unsatisfactory. So millions of young people become unemployable.

It's hard to imagine what it must be like to be in your mid-twenties and realise you are probably unemployable for the rest of your life. This must surely be our most serious social problem. Several solutions have been suggested, but the unions have blocked them all.

Three years ago, the then Deputy Minister of Finance, Jabu Moleketi, suggested at an ANC National General Council meeting that the Labour Relations Act be adjusted to include lower scales in the salary ladder for under-25s to help them get started. The unions went ballistic at the very suggestion and Moleketi’s proposal never even made it to the agenda. More recently the government has talked of promoting youth employment through a wage subsidy, but the unions have opposed that, too, on the grounds that it would create a two-tier labour market.

This column has repeatedly advocated a broad apprenticeship system covering all manner of artisan and service industry skills, which has also failed to be considered -- presumably because it, too, would be seen as creating a two-tier labour market. So the unemployed youth must stay unemployed, just as the old-age and other pensioners must remain in poverty, so that those who already have jobs can have more for what they do.

One thing is clear in all this: despite its claims of being pro-poor, Cosatu is no friend of the poor and the unemployed. It is their deadliest enemy.

In fact the poor and the unemployed have no friends. They are our forgotten people. Everyone talks about them to burnish their own images, but in this greedy, gimme, post-liberation age no-one does a damn thing to help them. Until we do, until we acquire Gordhan's "national intent" to draw the young unemployed into the economy by enabling them to acquire on-the-job skills in a country desperately short of skills, there is no chance of ever attaining a 7% growth rate and no increase in the tax base to help sustain the pensioners and the disabled. We shall continue to languish with the world's widest wealth gap.