The bang-bang nerve of striking down dreams

Yesterday I read a story in the newspaper titled “Black youths becoming less skilled.” Pali Lehohla of Stats SA was reading the report on youth unemployment. ‘Black youth between the ages of 25 and 34 lost out in acquiring skills through the 20-year period, and that is the crux of the issue of youth unemployment,’ he reportedly said. 

As I was reading it, my mind raced back to the day in 2012 when a very irate HR Consultant phoned me. She felt that she needed to talk to someone. I pulled the car to the side of Golden Highway to listen to what she had to say.

‘I have just come out of the HR Committee meeting,’ she said. ‘An executive who came to address us gave us a real dressing down.’
About what, I asked.
‘Apparently we are doing nothing to transform and the business is feeling the pinch.’ She went on saying ‘Every year we chase the targets to recruit and employ Black talent from graduate level to senior management.’

‘Okay,’ I urged her to continue.

‘But our frustration is that every time you talk Employment Equity line (managers) tell us that there is no skilled Black talent; so the people come here, get frustrated, or if they stay until the end of graduate programme, they don’t get appointed and therefore they leave!’

‘Hold on; why is this happening?’ I asked.
‘They reject Black talent, and then they have the nerve to come to meetings to grill us on our dismal failure to help the organisation to transform!’

Where does your (Black) HR Executive feature in all of this? I asked her.
‘Ooho! That one has no influence whatsoever.’
‘But…’
‘No one knows how she got to that position,’ she said, nullifying what I was about to say.

When I lifted my eyes, two boys were signaling at me to give them a lift home. The Ipelegeng Bus droned noisily and stopped right in front of me. The Caller said something about being “so angry and tired of this nonsense I am even prepared to resign.”

The bus ejected Black talent and swallowed some, and sped off its way towards Orange Farm, Evaton and Sebokeng. The passengers in the bus are those I usually see at the bus stops around Johannesburg every afternoon. They wait there for the bus ride back home. Most of them have been plodding like this for fifteen years and more.

I figure that the boys who are “interrupting” my phone conversation have shunned nearby schools (some are overcrowded; some are dysfunctional; some have closed down) to find better education far away. Perhaps some of them can afford school transport but they choose not to use it. Yet I have not seen school transport in that part of the world. So the learners risk their lives every day to get education.

The caller told me about two young people who came through graduate programme about two years earlier. They were fast-tracked through to HR management positions. My ears stood up, yet I followed the actions of the two boys by the pavement. I must have asked something about what qualified those two to even bypass her (a qualified professional with 7 years experience) to management level. I only regained full focus when she said ‘maybe it’s because they are White.’

It came with a bang. The gravity of this, my mind argued, is that the two inexperienced, newly appointed HR managers, who came through dubious means, will be replicating the norm of striking down dreams, given the power which has just been bestowed upon them.

If the school kids who are hitch-hiking down Golden Highway make it to graduation, and find a career job, they are likely to witness what the HR Consultant is witnessing in the plush corporate corridors North of Joburg. If they do not make it, they are likely to join the multitudes of youth who entered large corporate premises in the city through a promising Learnership or graduate programme, only to be let go after 12 months.

I think of this as I make a mental note of the fact that the highest unemployment rate is of people between ages of 15 and 24. Today the Stats SA is saying the Black youth of 25 to 34 years lost out in acquiring skills in the 20-year period, and are part of the 75% youth unemployment.

As a consequence, the future is such that the Black youth will hop in and out of buses to do unskilled jobs far from home, because they could not impress dubiously appointed managers who struck down their ambitions, because they were not “fitting in” to the company culture. And what of the irony of great BEE scores, obtained through hurried skills development programme of Black youth, that would have earned the company serious contracts during the financial year? It is a frenzied bang-bang of legislative compliance.

The mood of the phone conversation was turbulent. I was listening, but I was not commiserating; I was tracing the ramifications of what she was angry about. The bus, the passengers and the school boys who cannot afford a ride to and from school illuminated the conundrum. We ended the conversation, agreeing that we must explore the solution.

The school boys had suddenly disappeared. As I turned on the ignition, I wandered how the female school girls cope with this situation. Further down the way, I offered the lift to a father of 3 school-going children. He told me that he is working in Benoni. ‘The company car drops us at Eldorado Park; so I hitch-hike everyday to get home.’

‘Haibo, ntate!’ I exclaimed.

‘Yebo, mfana wam’; I have been working in Benoni for 18 years.’