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Picture Courtesy: (SABC News) DA leader speaking at a campaign rally outside COSATU house.
(The Post News)- On Wednesday, May 2, members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) Party embarked on a campaign rally outside the house of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. DA members gathered outside COSATU’s house just a day after the celebration of Workers’ Day to demonstrate and show COSATU that it needs to take action in fighting against unemployment and creating more job opportunities.
Among many other issues, unemployment and job creation are some of the issues that the DA has centered its election campaign around. Speaking about the celebration of Workers’s Day, DA leader John Steenhuisen said that it is not worth celebrating because SA has a 42% expanded unemployment rate and 7 out of 10 young people are unable to get jobs. Hence, he said worker’s day should be called ‘Workless Day’.“Clearly, we have a government in a tripartite alliance that COSATU is a part of.
That way, many more people would be able to be taken into work and be given at least an opportunity to put something on the table at the end of the month—they would not be sitting in the ranks of the 11–7 million,” said Steenhuisen. He spoke about the plan that the DA released a week ago. He said it is a clear plan that demonstrates how the DA can create 2 million jobs in the coming few years in SA. He said that the plan demonstrates how the country can do away with bad legislation by removing obstacles and doing away with organizations like COSATU, which have the power to fight unemployment but fail to do so.
According to Steenhuisen, COSATU is not fighting for people without jobs, but it is fighting for people with jobs, and the DA is fighting for the 11–7 million people without jobs, and it has had enough of living with the indignity of joblessness in this country. Steenhuisen explained that the reason they gathered outside COSATU house is that COSATU house is a crime scene that has killed and continues to kill thousands of job opportunities daily, and that the DA does not hate workers as COSATU has claimed. “We love workers, and that’s why we want to create millions of more workers in South Africa,” said Steenhuisen.
The DA wants to create more job opportunities because when people work, poverty is dealt with, young people cannot be persuaded to commit crime, people are able to provide for their families and children get the opportunity to have a better future. Steenhuisen called the tripartite alliance an unholy alliance because, according to him, the alliance continues to put in place policies on South Africans that destroy jobs instead of creating them.
He said the alliance has created an insider-outsider economy, which allows those with connections to them to get all the available opportunities while those without connections or political affiliation suffer. He believes that 30 million people being below the poverty line is an insult to South African citizens.
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