JZ really has little option but to adopt "employment creation" as a main objective.
The problem, and it is a problem, is that government "locked itself" into the standard American style capitalist model from the start, i.e, 1994.
In this model the interests of "big business" are paramount. "Ordinary business" is in a continual "struggle" to establish itself and maintain viability. Success of the former depends largely on to what extent the new elite is "cultivated" and benefits. Success of the latter depends on an admixture of ingenuity, struggling with bureaucracy, adaptability to ever moving goal posts, corruption and pure luck.
In this scenario job creation for the disadvantaged masses is secondary and incidental to the interests of business "and the "fat cats".
What was needed, from the start, was a far more "revolutionary" and imaginative model, posting SMEs as central. In this model it is "self employment", not "job creation" that becomes a central objective. It is no longer rocket science that this is the ideal model for a country with our profile.
More importantly though, is the fact that an SME model equates with social justice for being inherently inimical to exploitation and the now renowned excesses of capitalism.
But, of course, a revolutionary government "lost its soul", and its way, right at the start, with the "arms deal" and the onset of BEE, both of which torpedoed any chance of true socio-economic transformation.
See my post on the "Twin Towers of SA" at - http://coginito.blogspot.com/2010/11...th-africa.html
And yes, concomitantly we need "less regulation". The SME model definitely cannot work with stifling, suffocating employment laws as it's dynamism is entirely dependent on highly imaginative, innovative, spontaneous relationships in sometimes very small "units of wealth creation".
JZ now has something of a "nightmare situation" in which it will be huge toss up as to which occurs first, acceptable transformation or Tunisian/Egyptian style dissatisfaction.
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