Briefing Paper

Labour and Unemployment in South Africa: Notes Towards a “Grand Bargain”

“The problematic is very clear: high unemployment, high inequality and low growth, combined with a lack of consensus
on what to do. The last point is important. There is no shortage of specific actual policies and interventions, as well as specific further proposals for policies and interventions,
and there is no shortage of detailed debate and discussion around each of them.
We could of course, and we will no doubt, debate these and even more new proposals. But perhaps we should first investigate
why there is such a lack of consensus. Is the matter purely a technical one to do with disagreements on design of policies and interventions, or is it more holistic than that, related to broader vision? Is it to do with which political constraints
are taken as binding, and which are not?”