A leading International Monetary Fund (IMF) official last week urged South Africa’s social partners of government, labour and business to pursue a “broad national bargain” to overcome the prevailing structural impediments to higher growth and employment. Speaking in Pretoria at an event hosted by the South African Institute of International Affairs, first deputy MD David Lipton said that, while there were external factors both supporting and constraining growth in the economy, South Africa needed to “do more on its own” to overcome a number of “home-grown” limits to faster economic expansion.

Sadly, South Africa is no stranger to the scourge of youth unemployment. But the ‘Neets’ (not in employment, education or training) problem is now receiving heightened international attention. In a recent article headlined ‘Generation jobless’, The Economist calculates that almost 290-million young people between the ages of 15 and 24, or nearly a quarter of the world’s youth, are neither working nor studying.

The National Development Plan (NDP) has quickly morphed into something of a cat’s paw for a range of political and social groupings both within the governing alliance of the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, and without. The Democratic Alliance (DA) – which has been somewhat weak on the policy development front over the years, preferring to focus on oppositional politics rather than developing serious policy alternatives in preparation for governance – has even had the audacity to suggest that the plan represents its policy stance rather than those of the ANC.