With National Youth Day due to be commemorated over the weekend, it is opportune to reflect on the position of young people in South African society generally and in the economy more specifically. Sadly, the picture is a fairly depressing one. The education system has simply not lived up to the high hopes we all had for it in 1994. Many young people are falling pray to, or being absorbed into, South Africa’s serious social problems of crime, violence and substance abuse. And the employment prospects for many of this country’s youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are so limited that strain is being placed on families and social services – eventually it could even exact a toll on societal stability.

South Africa’s dismal growth performance during the first quarter of 2013 should serve as a serious wake-up call for all South Africans, but especially those who have leadership responsibilities in government, business and within the labour movement. The quarter-on-quarter economic expansion of only 0.9% was the country’s slowest pace of growth since the 2009 recession, and the release of the figure by Statistics South Africa has resulted in much anxiety, as well as some formal downward revisions to the growth outlook for the year as a whole.

It is going to be interesting the see whether changes to the adjudication criteria for the purchase of 1 064 locomotives, provisionally valued at R35-billion, delivers the localisation and job creation benefits being advertised. It has been agreed that the adjudication will be conducted using a 60:20:20 formula, with price accounting from 60%, black economic empowerment (BEE) 20% and local content 20%. The formula deviates from the prevailing Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA) ratio stipulating a 90% weighting for price and 10% for empowerment.