As South Africa marks Workers' Day, we should be honest about the contradiction at the heart of this occasion.
This is a country in which work is still out of reach for millions. On the latest official figures, 31.4% of South Africans are unemployed. On the expanded definition, which includes those who have given up looking for work, that figure rises to 42.1%. Around 7.8 million South Africans are officially unemployed. Joblessness in South Africa is a national crisis.
Workers' Day should be a day on which a country celebrates the dignity of work and the opportunity that comes with it. In South Africa, it increasingly is a reminder of how many people have been denied both.
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There is little dignity in being locked out of the economy. There is little justice in telling young South Africans to celebrate workers when so many of them have never had the chance to become workers at all. And there is little credibility in the annual parade of speeches from leaders whose policies have helped to produce one of the worst unemployment crises in the world.
The truth is that jobs are not created by slogans. They are created when an economy grows, when businesses can invest with confidence, when infrastructure works, when streets are safe, when electricity is reliable, and when government understands that its role is to open the door to opportunity rather than stand in the doorway blocking it.
That is why the contrast within South Africa matters.
The Western Cape has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, at 18.1%, far below the national rate of 31.4%.
The province's expanded unemployment rate is 23.7%, also dramatically better than the national figure. In the last quarter of 2025 alone, the Western Cape added 93,000 jobs. Over the year, it added 95,000 jobs.
Cape Town's official unemployment rate has fallen to 19.8%, and the city added 113,000 jobs year on year. That does not mean the work is done. But it does mean that better government produces better outcomes. Where government is cleaner, more capable, and more focused on growth, more people find a pathway into work.
And while too many people are still unemployed the successes achieved where the DA governs does show that South Africa's jobs crisis is not inevitable.
It is political.
It is the result of choices.
And different choices produce different results.
If we truly want to honour workers, then we must build a country that creates more of them.
That means backing economic growth instead of throttling it.
It means fixing ports, rail, energy and policing. It means making South Africa investable again.
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On this Workers' Day, the Democratic Alliance renews the commitment to fight for a South Africa in which more people can work, earn, build, provide and live with dignity. Because the true measure of a pro-worker government is not what it says on 1 May. It is how many workers it helps create on every other day of the year.
