Implementing minimum wage a catch-22 for Ramaphosa

We acknowledge the reasoned assertion by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa that a minimum wage alone will not banish poverty as there are just not enough jobs around to soak up the serried ranks of the vast pool of 27% unemployed in this country.

The catch-22 facing Ramaphosa is the unassailable fact that government produces no direct employment other than to squeeze another few souls into the ballooning state bureaucracy, a juggernaut who cannot logically be called civil servants because in the main they display neither civility nor produce any recognisable degree of service.

While it is true the government does help boost employment in an indirect form by funding public service projects, it is the private sector that is left to implement them. And as recent history would tend to bear out, tenderpreneurship has proved a breeding ground for self-seeking corruption and a tendency to ignore recognised norms by cutting corners at every opportunity.

Ramaphosa is quite correct in saying government had to ensure the right people were in place to police the new minimum wage. That is surely more easily said than done with about 6.6 million South Africans falling into the dispensation that is due to come into effect next year.

There is also the frightening spectre of job losses, rather than any immediate alleviation of the problem.

“There was a panel that advised the social partners [that] initially said there may well be job losses, but the information at hand is not definitive … sometimes the issue of job losses is exaggerated,” said Ramaphosa. “We are not flying into this blind. We are taking fairly calculated measures.”

We have no reason to doubt him or, for that matter, question the intentions behind the new minimum wage. But as the old saw so sagely notes: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

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