Stubborn unemployment has been both a puzzle and a point of conflict for South African policymakers, labour and business. Even when new jobs were created - which they were in the years up to 2008 - increasing numbers of people who came onto the labour market meant the unemployment rate remained high. Policy discourse has been muffled in the past decade - in spite of the National Development Plan - by a focus on accumulation by the well-connected at the expense of development. There is hope, as the Jobs Summit kicks off this week, that this may begin to change, that key challenges such as unemployment and inequality can be put at the centre of the policy table. A below-the-radar National Treasury project, the Jobs Fund, has been working quietly over the past few years to forge the social compact necessary to create jobs in innovative small businesses around the country.
When Ntshantsha...