The coal stove in our Elandskop home not only warmed our bodies, it filled our lungs with smoke until every breath burned. We pressed close to its iron belly, grateful for its heat, but the same coal that kept us alive left us coughing.
South Africa’s unions are that stove: they have offered warmth and dignity to some, yet the smoke they keep feeding into the economy chokes millions who have been left outside in the cold.
From liberation fire to lingering smoke
It wasn’t always this way. South Africa’s trade unions were once engines of liberation. In 1973, strikes in Durban lit a fire no government could ignore — a fire kindled by ordinary workers.
The wave of independent unions that followed would, by 1985, consolidate into Cosatu, the coal stove that gathered and sustained the flames. To gather at a union hall in the 1980s was to breathe freedom itself — workers’ rights and human rights were inseparably linked.
But three decades into democracy, that liberation fire burns differently. What was once a broad front of solidarity has narrowed into selective protection. Warmth for some, smoke for many.
Smoke in the room
Stats SA’s latest survey lays bare the crisis:
- Official unemployment: 33.2% — one of the highest on Earth.
- Expanded unemployment: 42.9%.
- Total jobless: 8.4 million people.
- Youth unemployment: 46.1% — almost half of young South Africans.
Globally, unemployment hovers at about 5%. In provinces like the Eastern Cape and North West, more than half of young people are Neets – not in school, not at work, not in training. They sit outside the house, coughing in the smoke, waiting for a door that never opens.
I think of a 22-year-old I met in Braamfontein, named Sipho. He graduated from matric with hopes of studying IT, but after failing to secure funding he spends his days drifting between internet cafés and friends’ flats, CV in hand, hope thinning like the winter air.
“Uncle,” he told me, “I don’t want a raise, I just want a first payslip.” Sipho is not a statistic. He is the face of our suffocating smoke.
Vavi’s fire alarm: The state has failed
On Newzroom Afrika recently, SA Federation of Trade Union’s Zwelinzima Vavi and Congress of SA Trade Unions’ Zanele Sabela spoke of collapsing services, stagnant growth and policy failure. On this, they are right. The state has failed spectacularly on the basics.
- Electricity: The winter of 2025 passed with hardly any load shedding — a remarkable improvement after years of rolling blackouts. But Eskom still sits on mountains of debt, grid failures loom whenever outages spike, and new capacity lags behind long-term demand. Stability feels borrowed, not earned.
- Transport: Trains rust on sidings, roads buckle under potholes.
- Water: Leaks and neglect leave towns dry.
- Education: A system that produces certificates but not skills.
- Policing: Communities are left exposed to crime and corruption.
Add to this a steady diet of austerity budgets, neoliberal frameworks like Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) and Operation Vulindlela, and relentless deindustrialisation. Austerity has meant wage freezes, shrinking infrastructure budgets, and hiring caps that choke public investment. Neoliberal reforms stabilised debt and markets, but failed to generate inclusive growth — Gear promised jobs and delivered mass unemployment, while Vulindlela prioritised investor confidence over industrialisation.
Meanwhile, deindustrialisation has hollowed out the very sectors that once absorbed unskilled labour. Manufacturing’s share of GDP has collapsed from about 20% in the 1990s to barely 11% today, while mining jobs have evaporated.
Together, these forces have left South Africa with a service-heavy economy demanding skills the education system cannot supply.
Vavi is correct — the fire is real, and government negligence allowed the room to fill with smoke long before a strike was even called.
Coal shovelled by unions
Yet the unions are not innocent bystanders coughing with the rest of us. They are also the ones shovelling the coal.
In 2010, a public sector strike swallowed 18.9 million workdays in just three weeks.
In 2012, the Marikana strike bled R16-billion from mining and scorched South Africa’s reputation abroad.
By 2014, the platinum strike dragged on for five months — R24-billion in wages gone, R10-billion in company earnings lost.
In 2018 alone, more than one million workdays were lost to strikes — the equivalent of shutting down the whole economy for two full days.
Each strike brought warmth to insiders — higher wages, better conditions. But the smoke drove away investment, stalled production and left millions of unemployed coughing in the doorway.
The missing player: Business
The government and unions dominate the blame game, but business elites are hardly innocent. Too often, they retreat to defensive postures — cutting investment, hoarding capital or moving assets offshore.
When mining houses automated, they shed thousands of jobs with little vision for retraining. Retail giants squeeze suppliers without expanding decent work. The private sector cannot keep hiding behind investor confidence while millions remain jobless. Capital that refuses to risk building the future is just another log on the fire.
Firewalls or firetraps?
Unions argue — with some truth — that without them wages collapse and workers are exploited. But protection that locks millions out is not solidarity; it is a gated community with smoke alarms only for some.
High entry wages, rigid dismissal laws and centralised bargaining have become firetraps. Small businesses — the fire escapes of any economy — are boarded up by inflexibility.
A miner or a teacher sits close to the stove, warm. The unemployed youth in Braamfontein coughs in the doorway. Coal for some, smoke for others.
The wind howls
And then there is the wind. The coalition government that replaced the ANC’s majority in 2024 promised jobs. Yet unemployment has risen for two consecutive quarters.
The global storm only makes it worse. In August, the US slapped 30% tariffs on South African imports. As many as 100,000 jobs in the automotive industry and agriculture hang in the balance.
The government blames business. Business blames unions. Unions blame the government. Meanwhile, the smoke suffocates a generation.
Other fires burn differently
This smoke is not inevitable. Rwanda has rebuilt industry through targeted state-guided capitalism, using incentives to channel investment into manufacturing and agro-processing. Kenya has leapfrogged into digital trade through mobile money and tech hubs, transforming Nairobi into a continental innovation hub.
These are not perfect stories, but they prove that African economies can innovate, adapt and grow. South Africa is different not because we cannot change, but because we refuse to change.
Clearing the air
Four steps are urgent:
- From warmth for a few to firebreaks for all: Unions must shift from wage battles to job pacts — fighting not only for insiders, but for the millions still outside.
- Youth hiring as fresh air: The government already subsidises entry-level jobs through the Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) and initiatives like the Youth Employment Service (YES). These efforts have helped, but they remain too narrow and too shallow. The ETI often rewards companies for jobs they would have created anyway. YES placements rarely turn into permanent work. Public works programmes provide temporary relief but leave participants without market-ready skills. South Africa needs something bolder. Subsidies must be redesigned and scaled to where the future lies: green industries, agricultural value chains and tech apprenticeships. In Germany, youth wage subsidies paired with structured apprenticeships cut youth unemployment by nearly 10 percentage points. South Africa could do the same — but only if our programmes stop being symbolic gestures and start becoming structural pipelines.
- Public works that build, not burn: Reignite large-scale infrastructure projects that both create jobs and restore dignity — roads, rail, housing, renewable energy.
- Flexibility as oxygen: Ease rigid labour laws that scare away employers. Protecting a few while excluding millions is not justice. It is smoke by another name.
Why I write this
I write because I know what it means to sit in a room filled with smoke — to need the stove and resent it at the same time. South Africa’s unemployed live in that room daily. Vavi is right: unemployment is a firestorm fuelled by state failure. But unions and business must also reckon with their own sparks — their strikes, their rigidity, their risk aversion. Otherwise, they will remain firefighters who also keep shovelling coal.
Closing call
South Africa cannot keep coughing in this smoke. Unless unions, the government, and business choose together to clear the air, the stove of liberation will become a trap instead of a triumph.
The choice is simple: suffocate in smoke, or open the windows and let in a fresh breeze. DM