ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe’s recent remarks suggesting unemployed South Africans are “basking in the sun” instead of actively seeking work are not only insulting, they are profoundly dishonest.
They attempt to shift blame from a failing governing party to the citizens who have borne the brunt of its policy failures for nearly three decades.
To accuse millions of unemployed people of laziness in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world is an act of political arrogance.
South Africans are not unemployed because they lack initiative. They are unemployed because the ANC has failed to build an economy capable of absorbing them into productive work.
The dependency state he is complaining about 30 years later was deliberately engineered by the ANC.
It breaks my heart to note that 30 years later, under a black majority-led government, black people find themselves as subservient beings who can only survive from government handouts.
Social grants such as the child support grant and the social relief of distress grant were introduced as social safety nets meant to protect the vulnerable during periods of hardship.
Instead of using the interventions as bridges into economic participation, the ANC turned them into permanent substitutes for sound economic policy.
Grants became a political tool, a means to manage poverty rather than eliminate it, and worse, a mechanism to secure votes in the absence of real growth, industrialisation and job creation.
A government serious about development would have paired social assistance with aggressive skills development, small business support, infrastructure-led growth and labour-absorbing industries.
Instead, the ANC hollowed out state institutions, tolerated corruption, collapsed municipalities, chased away investment and presided over rolling blackouts that destroyed jobs.
To blame the unemployed for not “trying hard enough” is not leadership. it is gaslighting.
The truth is simple: you cannot job hunt in an economy that is not growing.
You cannot be “proactive” where factories have closed, municipalities cannot provide basic services*, and public transport systems are broken.
You cannot shame a generation locked out of opportunity by policy failure, cadre deployment and economic mismanagement.
What makes Mantashe’s comments particularly cynical is that the ANC benefits politically from the dependency it condemns.
Social grants are routinely paraded as evidence of care for the poor, while the structural causes of poverty remain untouched.
This is not empowerment, it is entrapment.
Dignity does not come from permanent reliance on the state, it comes from work, opportunity and hope.
South Africa deserves better than lectures from leaders who have never queued for work, submitted CVs into silence or watched qualifications become meaningless in a stagnant economy.
The upcoming elections present citizens with a powerful opportunity to reject the culture of arrogance, blame and dependency.
That power begins with a simple act: registering to vote.
Registration is not symbolic, it is the gateway to change. Without it frustration becomes silence, and silence protects the status quo.
I urge all South Africans, especially the unemployed and the youth, to go out in their numbers, register for the upcoming general elections and use their votes decisively in the municipal elections.
Voting is not about loyalty to a party, it is about accountability.
It is about voting out a government that has mastered excuses while failing to deliver jobs, growth and dignity.
The ANC created this crisis.
It should not be rewarded for it.
Thulani Dasa (community activist)
The Herald