Mantashe cla­ri­fies unem­ploy­ment remarks, says he wanted to encour­age act­iv­ism

ANC national chair and min­eral and pet­ro­leum resources min­is­ter Gwede Mantashe has sought to cla­rify his com­ments about youth unem­ploy­ment that have stirred up quite a con­tro­versy last week.

Speak­ing at Nyan­yadu Primary School in Dun­dee, Kwazulu-natal, on Wed­nes­day, Mantashe insisted he was mis­quoted as he did not call young people “lazy”.

“I am fight­ing young people here. They’ve accused me of say­ing they are lazy and I deny that. That’s not what I said. I didn’t use the term lazy. You can go back to my inter­view, you will not find ‘lazy’. I am mak­ing the point that we will only defeat unem­ploy­ment if we are act­iv­ists. If we are sleep­ing, we will not defeat it. We must be act­iv­ists,” he said.

Mantashe faced a ser­i­ous back­lash last week, after con­tro­ver­sial remarks he made alleging that the youth are unem­ployed because they are lazy and do not sub­mit CVS to search for employ­ment. He sug­ges­ted that unem­ployed South Afric­ans are overly depend­ent on the gov­ern­ment to provide jobs rather than act­ively seek­ing employ­ment.

“The ANC has given you a fish­ing rod. Must it now catch fish for you?” Mantashe asked.

On Wed­nes­day Mantashe said his inten­tion was to encour­age cit­izens to be more pro­act­ive in their pur­suit of employ­ment.

“People from our coun­try must have work. They must come out of their homes and look for the jobs. The jobs won’t be delivered to their door­steps. I’m told I said people are lazy. No, I said get up and look for jobs. If you have applied, do a fol­low-up, ask about your ref­er­ence num­ber as an applic­ant. It is up to you to make those fol­low-ups and check whether you appear on lists, whether you have been short­l­is­ted and whether you come to inter­views pre­pared. That’s all I am say­ing.”

He even revealed that he had engaged with the min­is­ter of labour about stra­tegic inter­ven­tions employed by other coun­tries that could assist to reduce high levels of unem­ploy­ment.

“I asked the labour min­is­ter whether our neigh­bour­ing coun­tries have iden­ti­fied par­tic­u­lar jobs to be reserved for cit­izens, and why we can’t do that here. You go to a gar­age, the pet­rol attend­ant assist­ing you is a for­eign national. Something is wrong. You go to a farm, you find a for­eign national work­ing there. You go to a res­taur­ant, the per­son serving you is a for­eign national. You go to the mines … basic work requir­ing basic skills is done by a for­eign national. That is not xeno­phobic; it’s about patrot­ism. You love your coun­try.”

So con­ten­tious were Mantashe’s com­ments that they invited a threats from ANC Youth League (ANCYL)’S pres­id­ent Col­len Mal­atji to picket at the party’s Janu­ary 8th cel­eb­ra­tion along­side unem­ployed youth with CVS in hand.

Mal­atji clapped back, say­ing the youth can­not be told by someone “who has never writ­ten or sub­mit­ted a CV” in their life.

“With the high level of unem­ploy­ment in South Africa, you find lead­ers if the ANC say­ing people are unem­ployed because they are lazy to apply for jobs. Those are people who are detached from the real­ity of the people of South Africa,” Mal­atji said on Thursday last week.

“We don’t want your views, we don’t want your slo­gans. We want you to speak res­ol­u­tions in the ANC and not what you think is right. We don’t care what you think. We care about the res­ol­u­tions of the ANC,” he said.

ANC sec­ret­ary-gen­eral Fikile Mbal­ula had to inter­vene in the pub­lic spat, read­ing the riot act to Mantashe and instruct­ing him to explain his con­tro­ver­sial remarks about youth unem­ploy­ment or face being sanc­tioned by the organ­isa­tion.

Address­ing ANC youth league mem­bers at a Peter Mokaba memorial lec­ture in the North West ahead of the party’s Janu­ary 8 rally, Mbal­ula said Mantashe should explain what he meant.

“I spoke to the national chair. He says he was mis­quoted. If he was mis­quoted, he must cla­rify him­self about that mis­quo­ta­tion … What the media is say­ing the national chair has said about the youth being lazy and that people must go and find jobs for them­selves — that mat­ter must be cla­ri­fied. If it is not cla­ri­fied, it will remain that the national chair has said [it]. This is not a jok­ing mat­ter; it is ser­i­ous mat­ter. It must be cla­ri­fied prop­erly,” he said.

“If he does not cla­rify him­self, I will issue a state­ment on behalf of the ANC to rep­rim­and him. If those are his views, they can­not be the views of the national chair of the ANC.”