Over the past few months we have seen many young graduates standing by the roadside with boxes written their qualifications in an effort to raise some awareness about their challenges of unemployment. In essence, they are saying:
Dear Society,
I have done everything that you asked of me. I avoided drugs, teenage pregnancy, alcohol in school and even though at times I had to eat corn flakes for supper I made it here, even though at times I had to wear those high heels to go to Cubana and be relevant just so that I can feel human, I made it here. All those sleepless nights in the computer lab and library, I am here.
But what is this; you never prepared me for this? All you said, Society was that if I do all this, I will be fine. And really towards the end of my studies, I could taste it, I already looked at cars that I would buy first, I already saw that fridge that I was going to buy for my mother, the shoes I want to wear. This was a few months ago.Mind you, I also have my sibblings who have been waiting for me so that their lives could change. But it is tougher now, I knock and knock no one opens, I am now classified as an unemployed graduate, and only now I see that those that were ahead of me, are the same, if they are not employed in retail shops, they either walk around with their envelopes responding to any call for leanership, flip some are even registering companies now and calling themselves entrepreneurs even though they never imagined themselves being that.
So, know that when I stand by the street corner, I have tried it all, and actually, my whole life has been about trying.
Yours in Unemployment
This is the reality we live in now, and no one seems to be coming up with the answers, and once again this shows how divided we are and how some legacies still persist in society.
After a few comments, all four of them and many likes, i think it is important that one add to this with maybe some recommendations and my own observations.
I think our universities are the least transformed institutions in the country and they dismally fail at being relevant. When i mention transformation we quickly think of race, but this is not what i am talking about. I have been exposed to many who have graduated from the University of the Free State, this university does not prepare those who attend it for the world of work, and of course the white students get jobs not because of their ability but because of the old boys network and their race of course. So, chances are they would also just be like the many blacks who fail to impress during interviews because of their lack of preparedness.
So the transformation i refer to may be curriculum transformation, but where do you start transforming anything at a university like the UFS when any change is seen as something against the Afrikaner culture. They are paranoid those people, also adding to this lack of transformation is fear, most of these academics, all they know is the University, and nothing else. Anyway this is not about the UFS, because most of these people with these card boards are not even in Bloemfontein. Which means that this is an issue that is just there within our academic space, that is if it is worthy to be called that at all.
One of the comments on my Facebook post:
“Yours in Unemployment” is a sad reflection of the global education system to prepare us for life in the real world. The answer lies not in employment, but in self-employment. After a few decades of self-employment, our advice is to study the lives and actions of the self-employed. There are millions of self-employment opportunities out there for those who merely ask
This is one comment that is true, but also loaded with what many of us see as privilege, the privilege to decide, to think, to ask. All these have prerequisite and in many cases if not all the cases, the basics must be met before one can safely do all this. If you don’t have a family waiting for you to finish university so that you can take the load off your sick domestic worker mother, you might be able to take time out to learn about these people. Thats just that, you need to be in a space where you don’t have to worry about the basics before you can do all this. The basics.
Given SHINGANGE 
Reblogged this on Solving Unemployment and commented:
A highly relevant article. It explains why we go to the lengths that we go to, just to be heard in a cluttered job market. The sad truth is, many of us were never ready…
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