EDITORIAL: Power outages kill jobs

SA is due to issue its labour force survey for the first quarter on Tuesday, and the forecasts from economists about the state of the labour market are depressing.  

Absa expects the data to show that the unemployment rate would edge up to almost 33%. It is not alone. “Unfortunately, there’s little prospect for much improvement in the near future with load-shedding intensifying dramatically into 2023.”   

At the risk of stating the obvious, rolling power cuts, which sometimes leave households and business with no electricity for up to 16 hours, eats into everything that powers the economy that has hardly grown for more than a decade.   

For example, Vodacom, one of the biggest players in the SA economy, illustrated the opportunity cost of load-shedding in its latest annual results, saying the R4bn it spends on backup power could have been connecting more people in rural areas. Who knows, Takealot.com, the country’s biggest e-commerce platform, could have a sound business proposition to set up warehouses in those areas and put thousands of people into jobs.   

Even if economists are slightly off in their forecasts, the number of unemployed people should instil a sense of urgency to fix our economy. Failing that, we run the risk of entrenching the kind of poverty that can upend the social compact that underpins our democracy.