Young South Africans Spend Significant Amounts Searching for Jobs

During the annual Youth Day, South Africa frequently calls on young people to become entrepreneurs. Although entrepreneurship is a vital avenue for addressing youth unemployment in the country, critics argue that this approach has become overly simplistic and detached from the realities required to build sustainable businesses.

Education is more important than ambition

Despite acknowledging the importance of entrepreneurial education, simply completing a course or seminar is insufficient. The ability to run a business differs significantly from the actual capacity to build one. Ambition alone is not enough if founders lack the necessary education, experience, networks, and supportive environment to create long-term companies.

It is crucial to move away from romanticizing those who abandon their studies for a startup, claiming it is a reliable development strategy. A more realistic, albeit slower, path involves completing formal schooling, developing literacy and numeracy, pursuing further education, gaining work experience, understanding customer needs, and learning how organizations function before attempting to build on a solid foundation.

The need for problem solvers

The country requires more builders and specialists capable of solving problems, rather than merely individuals forced into survival mode due to labor market failures. While survival-oriented businesses deserve respect, they differ from enterprises focused on growth. A person selling merely to survive is not in the same position as a founder creating a company capable of hiring hundreds of employees.

Middle-tier economic challenges

According to World Bank data, small and medium-sized enterprises account for about 90% of all businesses and over half of global employment. In South Africa, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that small businesses provide between 50% and 60% of the workforce and contribute at least 34% to GDP. However, too few small firms transition into medium-sized employers, which the country urgently needs.

Part of the issue is that growing companies are burdened too early with requirements typical of large, mature corporations. Amendments to South Africa's small business definitions classify micro-enterprises (up to 10 employees), small enterprises (11 to 50), and medium enterprises (51 to 250), with varying revenue thresholds depending on the sector. Nevertheless, a company with 60, 100, or even 250 employees is not a giant but often a small, growing business striving for professionalization, market access, cash flow management, and skilled recruitment.

The necessity of flexible policy

If South Africa wants more young entrepreneurs to become employers, policy must recognize this distinction. Regulation should be different for large, established firms capable of absorbing it, and lighter, simpler, and growth-oriented for truly small and scaling enterprises. Compliance should not become an obstacle for a promising company when hiring its next ten employees.

Similar principles apply to finance, procurement, and networks, as strong entrepreneurial ecosystems are built not only on motivation. As shown by the Startup Genome Global Report on Startup Ecosystems, competitive ecosystems depend on the interplay of funding, talent, market reach, connectivity, and knowledge. This means young founders need practical pathways to market entry, mentors who understand scaling, early customers willing to take risks, as well as access to capital and networks that allow promising companies to grow.

Examples of successful building

Young entrepreneurs also need higher-quality role models: not just famous founders, tender entrepreneurs, or Silicon Valley myths, but authoritative South African builders who solve real problems, hire people, serve customers honestly, and create useful products or services.

As stated in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the concept of 'social entrepreneurship' may mask a simple truth: much of honest and productive entrepreneurship is already social activity when it creates value, jobs, and improves services upon which the population depends. This is the kind of discussion that should take place on Youth Day, because entrepreneurship will help develop South Africa's future leaders only if we stop viewing it as a slogan and start seeing it as a system that needs to be built.

Young people do not need another call for intensified struggle. They need schools that build competencies, universities that introduce ideas and technologies, workplaces that provide experience, investors willing to support them, worthy examples to emulate, and a government that steps aside, giving small businesses room to grow.

President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation, drawing a clear line between combating illegal immigration and hostility towards Africans. He emphasized that South Africans are not inherently xenophobic, but acknowledged that illegal migration places significant pressure on the labor market and public services.

Border Management Strategy

The five-pillar strategy proposed by Ramaphosa includes strengthening controls, establishing specialized immigration courts, reinforcing border security, combating corruption within the Department of Internal Affairs, and developing continental cooperation. This policy is viewed not as an attempt to reject neighbors, but as a state's effort to manage its own borders, which is the right of any sovereign state.

Ramaphosa further noted that no economic grievances or public discontent justify mob action against another person, nor do they legitimize vigilantism. He unequivocally stated that only the state has the right to enforce immigration laws, not private citizens or self-defense groups. Recognizing the crisis and condemning violence do not contradict each other; rather, they represent the only honest intellectual position.

Selective Application of the Label

The article draws attention to the selective use of the term 'xenophobia.' Examples are provided where mass deportations, such as in Nigeria in 1983 (the 'Ghana Must Go' episode), were rarely covered by global media as an assessment of Nigerian character. Similar instances, such as Ghana acting against foreign traders, or the long-term deportations of Ethiopian workers by Saudi Arabia, received comparatively weak international resonance. Moreover, Italy's handling of migrants in Albania or large-scale US deportation operations are discussed as political measures, not manifestations of national bias, whereas analogous actions by South Africa are perceived as a moral crisis.

Continental Inaction

The silence of the continent itself is named a more alarming aspect. Tragedies in Tigray (Ethiopia), the civil war in Sudan, which caused the world's largest displacement crisis, and the M23 conflict in eastern DRC, which led to waves of killings and displacements in 2026, are mentioned. The ongoing fight by Nigeria against Boko Haram, banditry, and mass kidnappings is also noted. Despite these crises, the African Union has not suspended interaction with governments, and continental leaders have not been excluded from summits. Nevertheless, by formalizing and legalizing immigration control while simultaneously condemning vigilantism, South Africa risks becoming the continent's 'villain of the year.' This asymmetry is seen as a failure of continental accountability.

Need for Diplomatic Dialogue

The author insists that the collapse of African economic and diplomatic cooperation cannot be allowed due to this issue. South Africa has already dispatched special envoys across the continent to explain its measures and engage with regional partners, as Ramaphosa stated that the country's future is inextricably linked to the continent's future. Cooperation within BRICS, the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, regional security, and bilateral ties must not be sacrificed to a narrative that refuses to accept two truths simultaneously: the existence of a real structural migration crisis in South Africa and the fact that its neighbors are not enemies.

In connection with the illegal immigration crisis in South Africa, which involves the relocation of repatriated foreign nationals to the Old Drive-In site in Durban under heavy guard, the article's author argues that employers who exploited these unregistered migrants bear significant responsibility for the situation.

Social inequality and the lives of the poor

The discussion about illegal immigration initially revealed deep class divisions. A large part of the activism appears to be a struggle between the lower classes and those who criticize them from a position of comfort. Although many middle-class commentators condemn anti-immigration movements, they often ignore the reasons why many poor residents of South Africa feel more indignation about this issue.

For many low-income communities, the consequences of illegal immigration are not an abstract political discussion but an integral part of daily life. Years of poverty have already created complex conditions for them: children are forced to compete for limited spots in overcrowded public schools, and people queue before dawn at clinics and public hospitals hoping to receive medical care due to facility overload and lack of resources.

Living conditions and infrastructure

Many unregistered migrants settle in informal settlements where rent is lower. In some cases, temporary structures are illegally built on floodplains or abandoned private land, increasing safety risks and further straining the already fragile infrastructure. Illegal connections to the power grid lead to network overload, forcing municipalities to impose load restrictions to prevent transformer explosions. Poor sanitary conditions and insufficient hygiene facilities create serious public health threats that residents face daily.

It is easier to dismiss these frustrations when living in a suburb isolated from such realities and discussing migration over coffee and croissants at a local cafe. However, one must ask who has benefited most from illegal immigration.

Exploitation of cheap labor

For decades, many households, both Black and middle-class white, relied on unregistered migrants as cheap labor. Domestic workers, gardeners, and factory workers often received pay significantly below the legally established minimum wage. Some earned only around 1,500 rand per month, sending part of their earnings home through money transfer services like Mpesa. Their unregistered status made them vulnerable, preventing them from demanding better working conditions or higher wages for fear of deportation.

The irony became particularly evident when citizens from Malawi were discovered in Sherwood. Many self-proclaimed defenders of justice criticized activists opposing illegal immigration, yet they overlooked the unpleasant truth that many of these migrants worked in homes and businesses as low-paid laborers.

Consequences of abandoning workers

When authorities began moving unregistered migrants to the Durban Drive-In site to facilitate repatriation, the police warned that hiring or sheltering undocumented foreigners is illegal and can result in fines of up to 10,000 rand. Nevertheless, some employers refused to release workers because they continued to depend on their labor.

Perhaps the clearest example of this contradiction was the incident after the June 30th protest marches, when some employers, according to reports, drove to the now-disbanded Durban Drive-In repatriation center and left their domestic workers there in the middle of winter. After years of benefiting from their labor, they simply discarded them and left.

A call for accountability

These same employers easily condemn government failures while ignoring their own role in undermining labor legislation. Exploiting unregistered workers, underpaying domestic staff, and creating an illegal labor market are not harmless acts. They are offenses that perpetuate exploitation and depress wages for everyone.

Giving out blankets and soup bowls after years of using illegal hiring is not charity. It is a show of sympathy that does little to eliminate the exploitation that necessitated such gestures in the first place.

Debates on migration in South Africa will remain incomplete as long as the focus is solely on undocumented migrants or on government failures. Those who knowingly hire unregistered workers, ignore labor laws, and profit from exploitation must also be held accountable. They are not bystanders in this crisis; they are active participants.

If the country is serious about solving the illegal immigration problem, accountability must extend beyond borders. It must include employers who support the underground labor market while blaming others for the existence of this problem. Until this happens, the discussion will continue to overlook one of the most significant factors of the problem—the middle class.