“While politicians celebrate Workers’ Day with slogans, we at Free SA are asking a more serious question: where are the jobs?” Free SA spokesperson Reuben Coetzer.
30 April 2025
As South Africa marks Workers’ Day on 1 May, Free SA stands not with the elites in regalia or the podiums heavy with empty slogans, but with the 12.2 million South Africans who want to work, but cannot. Not because they lack will or skill, but because they have been shut out of an economy that has stopped growing.
Workers’ Day, meant to honour the dignity of labour and the rights of workers, now rings hollow for the majority. With an expanded unemployment rate of 42%, it is not a day of national pride, but of national reckoning. Behind every brass band performance and union speech lies a deeper truth, namely the promise that hard work can secure a life of dignity has been broken.
South Africa’s economy has been in decline since the Zuma-era collapse in governance and the global financial crisis. It has never recovered. Business confidence is fragile, load shedding persists, state bureaucracy is bloated yet ineffective, and investor sentiment continues to deteriorate. For most citizens, living standards have declined since 2010.
“While politicians celebrate Workers’ Day with slogans, we at Free SA are asking a more serious question: where are the jobs?” said Free SA spokesperson Reuben Coetzer. “The government pretends that jobs can be legislated into existence, yet continues to pass policies that undermine job creation, stifle entrepreneurship, and punish private initiative.”
South Africa’s policy framework, including the Minimum Wage Act, Employment Equity Act, and procurement legislation, is too often shaped by ideology rather than reality. These policies may sound progressive, but they frequently achieve the opposite of what they promise: exclusion, not inclusion.
This Workers’ Day, Free SA is calling for a bold shift away from symbolic gestures towards real reform. Free SA advocates for these four simple and quick solutions, all of which would go a long way towards creating above population growth economic growth to create jobs:
- Trim the bloated public service by building a capable state and not a patronage machine for the privileged few.
- Unblock infrastructure investment by fast-track projects through private partnership without red tape.
- Privatise our railways and harbours which are the economic veins of our country.
- Remove overregulation that blocks young entrepreneurs from accessing the economy.
It is time to free our economy from the chains of failed policy and elite complacency.
“This is not a time for celebration,” Coetzer concluded. “It is a time for action, for honesty, and for courage. South Africa must choose policies that work for the people, not against them. Only then will Workers’ Day be worthy of its name.”
ENDS
Media enquiries:
Anneke Burns
071 423 0079
Free SA Publicist
media@freesa.org.za
About FREE SA:
At the Foundation for Rights of Expression and Equality (Free SA) we are committed to empowering South Africans to have their voices heard. In a true democracy, every opinion counts, and we ensure your voice resonates where it matters most: in Parliament, in public policy, and in the laws that shape our country. From advocating for democracy and equality to holding the government to account, we stand with you to demand transparent, responsive, and fair governance that serves its people.
To learn more, visit: https://www.freesa.org.za/