unemployment – praag.org

How to accelerate your business during the crisis

The SARS-CoV-19 virus has changed the world. Millions are unemployed, a global recession is fast approaching, and our parks and playgrounds once teeming with life and laughter have been abandoned and forgotten. One wonders whether the world can return to how it formerly was this scourge is rooted out. And, as the virus is indiscriminate in who it affects, it will be no surprise then that we tell you that the world of business has also been affected, in fact, some may say the world of business has been affected worst of all.

This page will tell you how you can accelerate your business during this global health crisis and how you can remedy the damage caused by the SARS-CoV-19 virus. By following the strategies set forward on this page, you will be able to salvage what’s left of your business and take it to new heights.

Here is how to accelerate your business during a crisis.

Strategic Planning and Forecasting

Forecasting and planning are crucial elements of any post-COVID recovery plan. Globally, businesses are being closed left, right, and center, which for some businesses who can withstand the brunt of the social distancing restrictions and lack of income, can be very good. If you are the only business in your market still functioning – when things begin to recover you will be in the best position imaginable. Planning and forecasting for this are crucial. You can do this by hiring a professional strategist or forecaster, or by cutting costs and making use of a business simulation, which is an application that will develop projections and strategies for you. These projections and strategies can be of great benefit and can aid you in helping your business to recover from the virus’s financial implications.

Marketing

There are a few ways that you can market your business now with great success. As has been mentioned, we are on the verge of economic collapse; because of this, many are unemployed, and many more are furloughed. Those unemployed and furloughed, a large percentage of them at least, are sitting around at home searching for jobs and idly browsing social media. You can use this to your advantage. Social media is a very powerful tool for business marketing, and now, with billions using it at one time, you can market your brand directly to your key demographic. They may not be able to make purchases immediately [financial collapse considered], but they will still be able to follow you and keep you in mind. You can also use social media influencers to your advantage.

Staff Training

Sales are, without a shadow of a doubt, the lifeblood of your company. If you are not making sales you will unfortunately not last very long. Making sales at the moment may be difficult, but with the right tactics, is not impossible. You may only be able to make enough to keep you afloat – but at the moment that’s all that matters. The training offered now will ensure that when things do return to normal that your staff will be better equipped to go out and make sales, thereby improving your company and improving your body of staff. There are multiple ways for you to train your staff at the moment, but it is important to consider that because of social distancing guidelines imposed upon us by our governments, we are unable to meet up physically, which means training exercises must be managed online, rather than in person. You can try roleplaying; one-to-ones; pitch exercises; peer coaching, and sales exercises.

Undercutting Competition

Ordinarily, in a business environment undercutting is frowned upon. However, at this time when businesses are all trying to stay afloat, undercutting your competition could serve as the best way to accelerate your business and drive your competition out of business. It is not a moral practice, admittedly, but it is one that will keep food on your table, and the tables of your employees, and when the virus does fade into obscurity and all of this is just a nightmare long gone, you will still rule your market and your business will be in a great position.

Expand

Expansion into areas that may be developing – or areas of business that may be hot right now [such as the sale of PPE], can be a great way to accelerate your business. If the financial complications of the virus have not touched you, then this may well be an option for you to consider. Expansion and growth mean acceleration.

With the help of this page, you should now know a few ways for you to accelerate your business during these troubling times. The crisis will not [hopefully] last forever, so it is important that you just get through the coming months. Good luck and stay strong – this will all be over before we know it.

Thousands of Spaniards march against immigration

Thousands of far-right protesters marched through Madrid on Saturday, demanding “social aid” for Spaniards and holding banners and placards reading “Spaniards Welcome,” a play on the “Refugees Welcome” movement currently organising across Europe.

About 10% of Spain’s 46 million people are foreigners, according to the National Statistics Institute.

Many were drawn by opportunities during a real-estate boom that preceded the crash of 2008. The population has declined each of the past three years due to an outflow of immigrants to their home countries.

With the unemployment rate at 22.4%, many immigrants who remain have had to resort to working in the underground economy.

They are commonly seen on the streets of Spanish cities selling pirated handbags and videos.

Gun-toting black kids hold up Swedish tourists

Four gun-toting black children held up 17 Swedish tourists in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.

The robbery occurred on Monday when the tourists were visiting the Iliso Care Society, which runs programmes including a project to address unemployment, a day-care centre and a food garden.

The children held up the tourists at about 11.30am , said Vivian Zilo, the founder of the NGO.

“The tourists were unperturbed by what has happened to them as they said it is not a true reflection on the situation in the area. They are grateful that they are unharmed,” said Zilo, the foster mother of two children.

Khayelitsha was one of the worst ten murder precincts in 2014. It also has the lowest police-to-population-ratio in the province, at 111 police per 100,000 residents.

“What happened is very sad because it was children as young as 14 who smoke drugs in the community committing this crime.”

Cameras, money and personal belongings were taken by the children. Zilo said the tourists did not want to be named.

Police spokesman Lieutenant- Colonel Andrè Traut confirmed the incident.

“The suspects are still running loose and the matter is under investigation.”

The locals who live off foreign donations are worried that this could give tourists a “bad impression” of the area.

“Some of them are our donors and this also provides a source of income to some unemployed people in the community,” said Zilo.

Source: timeslive

End the lure of employment

As many as 8 million undocumented immigrants hold jobs in the U.S. In fact, they account for more than 5 percent of the U.S. labor force. Their unemployment rate might even be lower than that of the nation’s black citizens.

And, stereotypes aside, the undocumented are hardly relegated to agriculture and domestic service. Construction, manufacturing and retail are among their biggest employers, according to the Migration Policy Institute. So, either quite a few of the nation’s 6 million employers have welcomed undocumented workers into their factories and stores, or a smaller number of employers have hired an awful lot of them.

Either way, little is being done to stop the practice. Workplace enforcement is minimal. Fines are small. Amid all the political bellowing about the border, no one in Washington pays much attention to employers’ practices.

Yet with 95,000 miles of shoreline, 500 commercial airports and a northern border that’s twice as long as its southern one, the U.S. could transform its Southwest into North Korea and still not stem the flow of undocumented immigrants seeking work, many of whom simply overstay legitimate visas. The only way to make meaningful progress is to end the lure of employment.

That will require fewer additional resources for border patrol and more for workplace enforcement, such as E-Verify. This electronic employment verification system, administered by the Department of Homeland Security, has been a qualified success. From 2007 to 2012, E-Verify queries from employers increased to more than 21 million, from 3.3 million. As of February 2013, more than 432,000 employers were using the system to confirm the eligibility of prospective employees.

E-Verify can still be gamed. One independent study found that during a three-month period in 2008, about half the unauthorized workers whose backgrounds it checked were nonetheless approved for work. But DHS has been upgrading the system so that it can access additional databases and more carefully filter applications.

As the system improves, of course, the demand for high-quality identity fraud stands to increase commensurately — as does off-the-books employment of undocumented workers. If Congress is serious about turning off the flow of undocumented immigrants, it will have to give DHS the resources it needs for workplace enforcement, including on-site inspections.

This would not please some of the business interests that fund both political parties. Nor would it placate those for whom any extravagance is justified by a cry of “Secure the border!” But it would weaken the magnet that draws undocumented immigrants to the U.S. in the first place. The House has stalled progress on immigration reform. If it is going to make the nation wait for a solution, it should recognize that the place to stop the inflow is not at the point of entry, but at the point of hire.

The catch is that this crackdown will have little to do with the U.S.-Mexico border. The Senate bill already includes a staggering $46 billion for border control, doubling the size of the patrol force (which is already double its 2004 size).

The House Homeland Security Committee has put forward its own, far cheaper immigration security bill, but it still suffers from Washington’s obsession with the border. Politicians from varied and distant locales relish demanding militarization down yonder while continuing to ignore the reality of illegal immigration in their own backyards.

Source: Bloomberg

SAIRR: Rising expectations lead to more violent uprisings

Rising expectations and youth unemployment have been identified as some of the sources of violent protests which have increased dramatically in the country in recent months.

The South African Institute of Race Relations, SAIRR’s programme manager and researcher, Georgina Alexander, says: “We have more people on social welfare at the moment in the country than those who have employment.”

In his State of the Nation Address last week, President Jacob Zuma promised on Thursday that South Africa would enter a new radical phase of accelerated socioeconomic transformation after the May election.

“More importantly, after the elections, the country will enter a new radical phase in which we shall implement socioeconomic transformation policies and programmes that will meaningfully address poverty, unemployment and inequality.

“It is a phase of focusing on economic transformation in particular. We have achieved political freedom, now we must achieve economic freedom and ensure that the ownership, management and control of the economy is deracialised further.

More needed to be done to advance blacks, he said.

“The number of black people and women in senior management has increased from less than 10% in the 1990s to over 40% today, which is a good achievement for the country. But it is not enough. Each year, the Employment Equity report releases statistics that indicate that the economy is still controlled by white South Africans in terms of senior and top management positions.

“We must therefore intensify the implementation of affirmative action policies in order to deepen reconciliation and social cohesion in our country,” Mr Zuma said.

Alexander says, “There is a threat that these protests will increase and become more violent. […] The government can see that the delivery protests are becoming more violent. They need to address the deeper causes of these service delivery protests.”

The deeper reasons for the protest lie in levels of youth unemployment and dependency on state as well as increasing rising expectations that people have, but it’s all directly reliant on the state to do something about it.

“This is just a spark, the deeper reasons for the protest lie in levels of youth unemployment and dependency on state as well as increasing rising expectations that people have, but it’s all directly reliant on the state to do something about it like to increase people’s living standard for them.”

Police officials and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) recently met to discuss the violent protests.

The SAHRC’s Danny Titus says, “The commissioner indicated to us that she would like to have a meeting next March with the Human Rights Commission focusing specifically on human rights and policing, and the number of issues around that.”

He says, “We would like to establish this relationship where we can make each other understand each other’s picture.”

Meanwhile, National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega says they are struggling to control violent protests because of a shortage of public order policing officers. There are only 4 000 such officers and yet there was double the number in 2006.

Five factors that will shape SA’s future: FW de Klerk

Former President says country continues to present an anomalous picture to the world

SPEECH BY FORMER PRESIDENT FW DE KLERK FOXHILLS RESORT, ENGLAND, September 13 2013

SOUTH AFRICA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

I should like to talk about South Africa: our past, our present and our future -‐ about

where we have come from since the 1980s;
where we now find ourselves; and
where we are going.

It is especially appropriate to do so now -‐ because I can recall no time since 1994 when so many South Africans have been so despondent.

We should remember 1994 -‐ not only because it was the birth of our new society -‐ but because it provides an important reminder that we South Africans have the ability to solve even the most intractable problems.

It is easy to forget now how desperate our situation was in the mid-1980s:

Our efforts to reform apartheid -‐ including the scrapping of more than 100 apartheid laws and the introductions of the tricameral parliament had simply redoubled demands for “one-‐man, one vote”;
We were beset with internal unrest and increasingly violent protests;
Scenes of chaos and insurrection in our streets dominated TV screens throughout the world;
After the Rubicon speech the rand had plummeted through the floor;
Unsure of the government’s ability to control the situation, international banks had pulled the plug on us by refusing to roll over our short-‐term debt;
Demands for comprehensive economic sanctions were reaching crescendo pitch;
Our armed forces were confronting increasing attacks on our borders and the borders of Namibia -‐ attacks that were supported by 50 000 Cuban troops.

There were no signs of light on the dark and stormy horizon.

And yet -‐ by 1990 -‐ we had clawed our way back from the precipice.

The victory of our forces at the battle of the Lomba River in September 1987 had finally convinced the Soviets, the Cubans and the Angolans that there was no prospect of a military victory.

The following year we began negotiations on the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola and the parallel implementation of the UN independence process in Namibia;
Also by 1987 the ANC had accepted that there would not be a revolutionary outcome in South Africa and that the only path to the future lay through negotiations;
The successful independence process in Namibia in 1989 showed that it was possible to negotiate successful outcomes with enemies;
Finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union -‐ symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989 -‐ signaled the arrival of an entirely new global paradigm.

By the beginning of 1990 these events had opened a historic window of opportunity for a peaceful and negotiated settlement. We did not hesitate. We jumped through -‐ and after almost four years of roller-‐coaster negotiations we were able to reach a national accord on our future.

It was our proudest moment.

Our 1993 and 1996 constitutions were the outcome of the genuine give and take process inherent in all negotiations. The final agreement was at least as close to original negotiating positions of the non-‐ANC parties as it was to that of the ANC.

It contains all the basic rights that we need to maintain a free and prosperous society.

It articulates the values of human dignity, equality, fundamental rights and non-‐ discrimination on which the new South Africa has been established.

It acknowledges the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law.

It makes provision for all the institutions and mechanisms that are necessary for multiparty democracy based on accountability, openness and responsiveness.

It has served us well for the past 19 years. Which brings me to the present.

It is important to remember the many, many successes that we have achieved since 1994 -‐ many of them as a result of government action:

We have experienced 19 years of economic growth -‐ interrupted only briefly by the global economic crisis of 2008.
The regulation of our security exchanges and our reporting standards are the best in the world;
Our banks are the second soundest in the world and our corporate boards are the second most efficacious. Our financial services and protection of minority shareholders are third best in the world and our ability to finance local equity is the fourth best internationally.
We are one of the primary gateways to Africa -‐ and are now the fifth largest investor in the continent.

We have also made significant social progress:

The percentage of the population living in absolute poverty has declined to less than 20% -‐ largely because of social grants.
More than three million housing units have been built -‐ enough to house almost a quarter of the population -‐ with another million units in the pipeline;
More than three quarters of the population now have access to electricity, drinkable water and sanitation
We have experienced moments -‐ like the 2010 Soccer World Cup -‐ when we have lived up to Archbishop Tutu’s characterization of us as the Rainbow Nation of God;
We have seen the rapid growth of new and self-‐confident black middle class. Whites now comprise less than 40% of the top decile of income earners.

At the same time we are beset by serious problems. One can hardly disagree with the diagnosis of the National Planning Commission regarding the nature of these challenges. They include:

High unemployment -‐ closer to 40% than the official figure of 25,6%;
Poor education -‐ especially for black South Africans -‐ who fare badly in comparative tests with children from the poorest African countries;
Poor public service delivery -‐ which has led to virtually daily protests throughout the country;
rising levels of corruption; and
the fact that South Africa is still a divided society.

Another growing problem is the increasingly destructive role that is being played by our militant trade unions. It is one of the main causes of unemployment and of our failure to attract the foreign investment that we need for sustained economic growth:

South Africa has the worst labour relations in the world. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report it is the worst of 144 countries assessed in terms of co-‐operation in labour-‐employer relations;
COSATU has continuously raised labour costs without commensurate productivity increases -‐ which has inevitably resulted in job losses. South Africa’s flexibility of wage determination is the fourth worst in the world.
Our labour legislation is amongst the most onerous anywhere. South Africa’s hiring and firing practices are the second worst in the world.
COSATU’s campaign to abolish labour brokers would lead to the loss of more than half a million jobs.
COSATU has steadfastly opposed proposals to open labour markets to the unemployed.
It is destroying jobs by alienating foreign and domestic investors through its confrontational stance and open support for nationalisation.
On top of all this came the Marikana massacre of 16 August last year; the subsequent wave of violent and uncontrolled wildcat strikes and hopelessly unrealistic wage demands. All this has been compounded by the precipitate fall of the rand against the US dollar.

So South Africa continues to present an anomalous picture to the world:

on the one hand a picture of failing governance; out of control trade unions; rising corruption and daily service delivery protests -‐ and
on the other hand, a picture of economic dynamism, enormous opportunities and a counter-‐intuitive sense of optimism -‐ particularly in bustling Johannesburg.

But what of the future?

Predicting the future is one of the most risky of all endeavours -‐ since we live in such rapidly changing times. Nevertheless one can identify some of the salient factors that will undoubtedly influence the course of events:

Whatever happens in South Africa will take place within the framework of macro-‐ developments on the global stage -‐ just as they have always done in the past;
Secondly, current developments within the ANC’s ruling alliance will play a key role. The question is whether the leadership will be able to hold together an alliance which now encompasses the whole spectrum
- from Stalinism to social democracy;
- from exclusive black nationalism to inclusive non-‐racialism;
- from genuine commitment to sound governance to pervasive crony capitalism and entrenched kleptocracy?

Will the ANC be able to continue to plaster over these increasing obvious cracks -‐ or will it split?
Thirdly, will it be possible to moderate the behavior of our rampant and wildly irresponsible trade unions?
Fourthly, will the government break away from its race-‐based ideology and accept the idea that the skills of all South Africans must be used to enable the country to address its problems and achieve its potential?
Finally, a critical factor will be our ability to maintain the excellent Constitution that we South Africans negotiated between 1990 and 1996 and the institutions that it mandates including
free and impartial courts;
an independent National Prosecuting Authority; and
government that is accountable, transparent and responsive.

So, these are the factors that will play significant roles in determining our future:

What will happen on the global stage?
What will happen within the ANC Alliance?
Will we be able to control the trade unions?
Will we be able to liberate ourselves from race-‐based ideologies? And,
Will we be able to uphold our Constitution and achieve the vision that it articulates?

Personally, I remain an optimist -‐ and believe that we shall be able to surmount the challenges that confront us now -‐ just as we were able to overcome the much greater problems that we faced 25 years ago.

Issued by the FW de Klerk Foundation, September 16 2013

Do South African whites really ‘have it so good’?

by Dan Roodt

In today’s City Press newspaper, Frans Cronjé of the South African Institute of Race Relations claim that whites live in some kind of paradise.

He cites statistics claiming the following:

“Between 1994 and 2012, the rate of unemployment among white people increased from 3% to 5.7%…

The white unemployment rate was low, even when compared to a host of international benchmarks. In the US, for example, the rate in 2012 was 7.6%, in Britain 7.9% and in Canada 7.2%.”

Apparently praising South African white entrepreneurship, he goes on to say that “while a black university graduate is more likely than a white graduate to find a job within 12 months of graduation (due to strict affirmative-action laws-DR), white graduates are four times more likely to start and operate businesses”.

I would treat these statistics about low white unemployment with a great deal of caution. Many whites are not on the unemployment statistics as they do not claim benefits from the government. Driving around many white areas, you notice their old, decrepit cars, lack of maintenance to their properties and other signs of economic distress.

Go to any five-star hotel now and you will find blacks sitting around in designer clothes. The only whites there are foreign tourists. Most cars costing R1 million (about $100 000) and more that I see every day in Johannesburg are owned by blacks, not whites. Blacks get all the lucrative corporate directorships and make easy money as “tenderpreneurs” to the state and municipalities.

I know of thousands of whites who literally had to leave the country to find jobs, in the Middle and Far East where they do dismal work as part-time English teachers or pack groceries in Australian supermarkets.

Many small businesses started by whites have failed, not least because of the racial laws and regulations imposed by government and the corporate sector. The corporate sector – banks and large companies – are now arguably more anti-white than government. They do not trade with white-owned businesses and generally sue or harass small businesses at the drop of a hat. Many whites have lost their homes which the banks require them to pledge as collateral for a simple overdraft for their small businesses.

More whites now live in so-called “informal housing” than at any time since the Great Depression. Solidarity estimates that up to 800 000 whites – educated, literate and previously taxpayers – now live in squatter camps and other “informal areas” such as this one:

Poor South African whites living in cabins normally used as garden sheds

We are witnessing the greatest social-engineering programme whereby one race is economically subjugated to another that this country and perhaps the world has ever seen.

The very notion that whites could be “liberated” by such an unfair and racist system is so fundamentally cynical that it has an Orwellian ring to it. But that is why the mainstream media no longer has any credibility among middle-class whites.

The South African media are loyal to foreign and corporate interests who see South African whites as an unwanted presence in the country, preventing them from bribing their way into looting most of the remaining assets in South Africa. That is why the SA mass media are constantly attacking whites, accusing them of racism, “apartheid privilege”, and the like. White males even get blamed for the intense crime and lawlessness in the country! Every white person knows that 99% of the violence is committed by other races, yet we are blamed for everything. If all else fails, there is always ever-increasing “the legacy of apartheid” to blame.

What I find amazing is that Frans Cronjé published two contradictory articles today, one in Rapport and this one in City Press. The one in Rapport, written in Afrikaans and therefore intended for a mainly white audience, shows how 500 000 middle-class taxpayers essentially contribute 50% of all personal taxes in South Africa. White readers of that article would be understandably outraged that, while still contributing a large share of the country’s taxes, they are treated as second-class citizens.

English in South Africa is increasingly the language of blacks and the internationalist whites who are hostile to Afrikaners and the white middle class, for reasons explained in the paragraph above, namely that their ownership of land and role in the judiciary and the accounting profession prevents the wholesale looting of our country. Even though looting is already taking place, there is still some semblance of legality left. Clearly, this has to go.

This article in English about whites is therefore intended for a black and foreign audience, to convince them that South African whites “have never had it so good”. Understandably the very real hostility felt for those dastardly Nazis and perpetrators of a “crime against humanity” will only rise upon reading this article. It will undermine any inchoate sympathy whites enjoy with their less brainwashed brethren in the West and Europe.

The most absurd sentence of all is the following: “(Whites) were liberated, first, from the guilt and pariah status that had been attached to their support and enforcement of apartheid.”

On the contrary, South African whites are now more hated and stigmatised than ever! Over the past twenty years the SABC and the mainstream media have played their quasi-communist propaganda about white evil and viciousness over and over in South Africa. Most of the time this propaganda is literally the work of unreconstructed communists who occupy powerful positions in South Africa, being the “white face” of the ANC government, the SABC and other state agencies. The British media, including the BBC, see us whites as free game now that we are utterly without any political power and lack any form of state support. More
unfair and one-sided news stories have been published and broadcast about us since 1994 than ever before, barring perhaps the 1890s when the Uitlander press and the London newspapers were publishing war propaganda about the Boer republics.

As for white guilt, there is a whole industry meant to inculcate it into us, almost from birth. At school our children are exposed to compulsory subjects such as “Life Orientation” containing political propaganda of the worst kind, meant to persuade them that their parents were all war criminals killing thousands, if not millions, of blacks. In reality, of course, only 500 blacks died at the hands of the SA police from 1948 to 1994, fewer than die every year as a result of police brutality under black rule! However, the foreign whites and media do not write about police brutality anymore because it is now committed by blacks and therefore of no interest.

More than 80 000 whites have been murdered since 1994 and up to a million white women have been raped. Four thousand farmers, their wives and children have been killed, many of them spending their last hours under dehumanising torture.

While all this is going on in the ghoulish present, not a week goes by without newspapers and radio programmes calling for whites to “repent about apartheid”, surrender the meagre assets that they still control or simply leave the country as they “have outstayed their welcome”. People are constantly telling me to “go back to Europe” or “get lost”, even though my forebears came here in the early 1700s.

Apart from racial quotas in education that prevent whites from obtaining a tertiary education, especially in medicine and other fields, an aging white population now endures a third-world system of medical care. Prior to 1994, whites had one of the best healthcare systems in the world, with both a private and a well-managed public hospital system.

Corruption and mismanagement have reduced the public system to a shambles while the costs of private healthcare have gone through the roof. Only the corporate elite can now afford private healthcare. Whites are almost banned from studying medicine by the universities so that their parents and grandparents may just die from neglect in the state hospital system.

Despite being well-educated and hard-working, affirmative action and so-called BEE (black-economic empowerment) have reduced most South African whites to poverty. Their mean income per capita is far less than the minimum wage in many European countries.The following table shows annual per capita income growth from 2001 to 2011 for all racial groups in South Africa:

Table-for-census-story — Source: Moneyweb/SA census

If the R365 134 earned by the average SA white is translated into dollar terms at $40 970, this is way below minimum wage levels in most European countries. However, this very modest white income gets taxed at 40% to fund the megalomaniac dreams of this make-believe government whose only interest is in seeking international prestige while it cannot even mend our roads, nor deliver school books on time. In a real sense, white poverty is caused by government, either through its high taxes or its racially interventionist policies.

This is Frans Cronjé’s “white paradise”!

‘Capitalism is the enemy’

The capitalist system is the real enemy in South Africa, Congress of SA Trade Unions general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Friday.

Problems such as xenophobia, corruption, gender-based violence, and substance abuse were rooted in economic misery, he said in Johannesburg.

“All of these are rooted in another set of three even bigger demons; unemployment, poverty, and inequality, which provide a fertile breeding ground for all the others.”

Vavi was speaking at a seminar hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand’s African centre for migration and society.

He said the latest figures on unemployment indicated things were getting “even worse”.

Statistics SA reported this week that the official unemployment rate in the first quarter of the year had risen to 25.2 percent from 24.9 percent in the last quarter of 2012.

Vavi said this did not reflect the full extent of the problem, as it excluded discouraged work seekers and those reduced to “cutting hair at the corner of the street”.

South Africa also had the most unequal society in the world, he said.

“If we do not address this, the demons… will be unleashed,” he said.

The “real enemy” was the capitalist system, which undermined social cohesion.

He dismissed business concerns that a proposed national minimum wage would lead to job losses as “propaganda and lies”.

“A national minimum wage would be a significant step towards securing greater social cohesion,” he said.

Eurozone unemployment hits all-time high: 19 million out of work

euro_unemployed — European unemployed queuing up in front of employment office

Eurozone unemployment levels have hit 12 percent – the highest in the history of eurozone record-keeping, since the currency was launched in 1999.

The average unemployment rate across the eurozone’s 17 constituent European Union countries rose from January’s initial 11.9 percent high to 12 percent in February, meaning a further 33,000 people were put out of work. Overall, 19.071 million are jobless across Europe.

Some countries, including Spain and Greece suffered unemployment rates as high as 26 percent over the month of February.

Spain and Greece have both been shaken by violent protests, with Greece experiencing a massive increase in suicides and attempted suicides in 2010 and 2011.

Conversely, the lowest unemployment rates are still to be found in Luxembourg (5.5 percent), Germany (5.4 percent), Austria (4.8 percent) and the Netherlands (6.2 percent).

Youth unemployment (under-25s) has also soared, leaving 5.694 million out of work in the EU 27 (3.581 million of whom were in the euro area).

In Greece, the figure of unemployed under-25s borders on 60 percent, while in Spain, 55.7 percent of the nation’s youth are still out of work.

In January, unemployment in the eurozone had reached a previous record high of 11.8 percent, according to the original Eurostat report, meaning it is continuing to rise, fueling concerns over the region’s economic crisis.

Some economic experts had forecast the rise in unemployment, especially after the earlier January figure was later revised upwards, to verge on 12 percent.

As the statistics relate to February, they do not yet take the impact of Cyprus’ bailout into account.

A separate survey, also released on Tuesday, indicated that the eurozone recession continued in the first quarter.

Within the last two weeks, Markit’s chief economist Chris Williamson aired serious concerns to AFP.

“Instead of the eurozone economy stabilizing in the second quarter, as many – including the ECB – have been hoping to see, the downturn could therefore intensify in coming months,” he said, expressing unease over the prospect.

The eurozone PMI shrank in March. Although not as bad as estimated a couple of weeks ago, the PMI stood at 46.8 points in the most recent survey. A figure below 50 is indicative of economic contraction. The overwhelming worry is that manufacturing activity has weakened across the region.

While there has been steady trade and good gains with non-EU countries, the drag on manufacturing order from within the eurozone is still significant.

Spanish manufacturing hit an especially steep slump in February, which follows news that the government plans to revise its economic forecasts for 2013, from an initially anticipated 0.5 per cent decline to a 1 per cent decline.

They Cyprus crisis in the last week of March seems to have had little overall impact so far. However, its effects could potentially strike later on in the year.

“While in some respects it is reassuring to see the events in Cyprus did not cause an immediate impact on business activity, the concern is that the latest chapter in the region’s crisis will have hit demand further in April,” Chris Williamson told Reuters on Tuesday.

Quadrupled recycled platinum supply driving mining price down

A significant increase in the supply of platinum from recycling, a strong fall in demand for autocatalysts and price-elastic Chinese jewellery demand are combining to hobble the platinum mining industry.

(Amplats) CEO Chris Griffith tells Mining Weekly Online in the accompanying video interview that secondary supply of platinum from recycling quadrupled from 500 000 oz a year to 2-million ounces a year from 2000 to 2012, with demand for autocatalysts falling by nearly 9% in the latter year.

While much store was placed on extra demand for jewellery in China, this demand proved to be price elastic, with demand rising when the price was down and demand falling when it was up, which kept the price in a narrow range.

With the price unlikely to rise and with the massive increase in costs, the industry is facing an increasingly tight future.

“Current market conditions are very difficult for platinum miners,” says Griffith.

This is in sharp contrast to the market conditions of the past.

From the 1980s to the 2000s, the rate of growth of demand for platinum in jewellery, industry and autocatalysis averaged 5% a year.

In 2006, Amplats anticipated wrongly that these halcyon conditions would persist to 2012.

But instead of demand continuing to grow at a rate of 5% a year from 2007 to 2012, there was a slight overall demand reduction, plummeting autocatalyst demand and ups-and-downs from jewellery demand, which traditionally serves as a market saviour when prices are low.

Miners were increasing supply in the expectation of continued high growth and at the same time the 2-million ounces of recycled supply began to virtually match what Amplats puts on to the market a year from its mining activities.

As a result of these fundamentals, there is an oversupply of platinum in the market – a scenario that is likely to persist.

“We’re unlikely to see a substantial improvement in demand in the short term and we are likely to see additional ounces come on to the market from secondary supply.

“Some of the demand will come from highly price-elastic areas, which means that the price is unlikely to rise.

“With the price unlikely to rise and with the massive increase in costs, it means that the industry is facing increasingly difficult times going ahead, not better times, hence the need for us, under circumstances of having loss-making shafts, to make a change to the business.”

The change has been the most far-reaching in the JSE-listed company’s 58-year history and involves the closure of two mines, the mothballing of four shafts, the selling of Union mine and the offer to create at least one new non-mining job for each of the 14 000 mining jobs that are expected to be shed.

“Clearly, our first objective has to be to restore profitability. In that process, we’ve evaluated this business inside and outside, backwards and forwards, for almost a year now, “ Griffith tells Mining Weekly Online.

The production profile will be cut by 400 000 oz to align the output with demand and Rustenburg will be restructured into three operating entities, removing 250 000 oz to 300 000 oz a year of high-cost production.

Four Rustenburg shafts, Khuseleka 1 and 2 shafts and Khomanani 1 and 2 shafts, will be mothballed for the long-term and the Rustenburg operations will become a 320 000 oz to 350 000 oz a year producer, ensuring more effective capital allocation.

As a result, Amplats will reduce its planned capital expansion over the next ten years by 25% to R100-billion in order to focus investment on low-cost, high-margin projects. – Creamer Media

Why Canada is richer than the US

On July 1, Canada Day, this year, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.

According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.

A few days later, Canada and the U.S. both released the latest job figures. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, again, to 7.2 percent, and America’s was a stagnant 8.2 percent. Canada continues to thrive while the U.S. struggles to find its way out of an intractable economic crisis and a political sine curve of hope and despair.

The difference grows starker by the month: The Canadian system is working; the American system is not. And it’s not just Canadians who are noticing. As Iceland considers switching to a currency other than the krona, its leaders’ primary focus of interest is the loonie — the Canadian dollar.

As a study recently published in the New York University Law Review pointed out, national constitutions based on the American model are quickly disappearing. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an interview on Egyptian television, admitted, “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.” The natural replacement? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, achieving the status of legal superstar as it reaches its 30th birthday.

Good politics do not account entirely for recent economic triumphs. Luck has played a major part. The Alberta tar sands — an environmental catastrophe in waiting — are the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and if America is too squeamish to buy our filthy energy, there’s always China. We also have softwood lumber, potash and other natural resources in abundance.

Policy has played a significant part as well, though. Both liberals and conservatives in the U.S. have tried to use the Canadian example to promote their arguments: The left says Canada shows the rewards of financial regulation and socialism, while the right likes to vaunt the brutal cuts made to Canadian social programs in the 1990s, which set the stage for economic recovery.

The truth is that both sides are right. Since the 1990s, Canada has pursued a hardheaded (even ruthless), fiscally conservative form of socialism. Its originator was Paul Martin, who was finance minister for most of the ’90s, and served a stint as prime minister from 2003 to 2006. Alone among finance ministers in the Group of Eight nations, he “resisted the siren call of deregulation,” in his words, and insisted that the banks tighten their loan-loss and reserve requirements. He also made a courageous decision not to allow Canadian banks to merge, even though their chief executives claimed they would never be globally competitive unless they did. The stability of Canadian banks and the concomitant stability in the housing market provide the clearest explanation for why Canadians are richer than Americans today.

Martin also slashed funding to social programs. He foresaw that crippling deficits imperiled Canada’s education and health- care systems, which even his Conservative predecessor, Brian Mulroney, described as a “sacred trust.” He cut corporate taxes, too. Growth is required to pay for social programs, and social programs that increase opportunity and social integration are the best way to ensure growth over the long term. Social programs and robust capitalism are not, as so many would have you believe, inherently opposed propositions. Both are required for meaningful national prosperity.

Martin’s balanced policies emerged organically out of Canadian culture, which is fair-minded and rule-following to a fault. The Canadian obsession with order can make for strange politics, at least in an American context. For example, of all the world’s societies, Canada’s is one of the most open to immigrants, as anyone who has been to Toronto or Vancouver will have seen. Yet Canada also imposes a mandatory one-year prison sentence on illegal immigrants, and the majority of Canadians favor deportation. Canadians insist that their compassion be orderly, too.

This immigration policy is neither “liberal” nor “conservative” in the American political sense. It just works. You could say exactly the same thing about Canada’s economic policies.

Canada has been, and always will be, overshadowed by its neighbor, by America’s vastness and its incredible versatility and capacity for reinvention. But occasionally, at key moments, the northern wasteland can surprise. Two hundred years ago last month, the War of 1812 began. Thomas Jefferson declared, “The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.” The U.S. was comparatively enormous — with almost 8 million people, compared with Canada’s 300,000. The Canadians nonetheless turned back the assault.

Through good luck, excellent policy and even some heroism, Canada survived the war. But it has taken 200 years for Canada to become winners.

(Stephen Marche is a novelist and columnist for Esquire Magazine. His most recent book is “How Shakespeare Changed Everything.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

Chaos and violence on the rise in UK

bobbiescroydon — British police in Croydon, South London on August 8, 2011

Chaos and violence are on the rise in the UK a year after the PM declared a war on gang culture, a study revealed. Police aggression and a refusal to tackle the root causes of delinquency are reportedly the main issues hindering the initiative.

On Monday, the Center for Social Justice (CSJ) released a damning report titled ‘Time to Wake Up.’ The study criticized the steps taken by the UK’s coalition government over the last year to curb the problem of rising social unrest and delinquency.

The investigation roundly condemned the government’s heavy-handed approach as exacerbating the problem, citing a perception in the government of the riots as a “random one-off” that can be managed by an elevated police presence.

“They could not be more wrong. The alarming fact is that many streets across the country are besieged by anarchy and violence. There is no control in such neighborhoods,” the report said. It also notes an increase in violence among younger gang members, and in the number of women joining gangs.

In the wake of the mass rioting that swept the UK last summer, PM David Cameron launched an “all-out war on gang culture,” maintaining that gangs were at the root of the social unrest. The CSJ report cited statistics showing that “individuals who have links to gangs are believed to be responsible for 16 percent of London’s total drug supply, nearly a fifth of stabbings, half of all shootings and 14 percent of all rapes.”

The CSJ argued that the 10 million pounds the Home Office allotted last year to combating gang culture had been poorly distributed. Some organizations designated for funding did not receive money due to a lack of awareness, which the report describes as indicative of a “complete disconnect between what goes on at the policy level to what goes on on the ground.”

The CSJ said that aggressive policing could be one of the main drivers of the increase in gang crime over the past year.

“Negative, discriminatory and aggressive police behavior, if not perpetuating gang culture, actively hinders attempts to tackle it,” the study said, adding that according to a CSJ survey, 57.7 percent of respondents believed the police’s relationship with young people had not changed since the riots, while 13.5 percent said it had worsened.

The organization expressed particular concern with the police policy of targeting gang leaders. Referencing the arrest of over 200 ringleaders in London over the past year, CSJ said their removal had led to the creation of volatile power vacuums, potentially paving the way for chaotic power struggles between younger gang members.

The UK government’s attitude towards gang violence will only yield short-term results, the CSJ argued, adding that the underlying issues need to be addressed if there is to be any long-term resolution of the issue.

The study described the current strategy as ignoring the root causes of the violence, such as family breakdown and dysfunction, drug addiction and unemployment: “It takes years to work with gang nominal. Preventative work to discourage young people from joining gangs has ‘fallen off the radar.’

The growing gang culture in the UK hit the headlines last year when thousands of young people took part in riots across the country, looting shops and damaging property.

Mass riots in London were triggered by the police shooting of suspected criminal Mark Duggan, The circumstances surrounding the incident are highly controversial: Some claim Duggan was unarmed when he was gunned down by an officer. The government attributed the ensuing violence and social unrest to a degraded youth culture.