Desperation in the Cartrack job queue

Thousands of young South Africans lined up in Rosebank this week hoping to score one of just 500 internships. It’s indicative of the desperation among the country’s youth.
3 mins read

You’ve seen it a thousand times: some politician on a podium, wringing their hands and gravely bemoaning “the ticking time bomb of youth unemployment” in the same disconnected tone as you’d discuss, say, unspent marketing budgets. 

Yet this week, residents of Joburg saw this concept in blinding technicolour: queues running more than a kilometre, snaking down a whole city block, of desperate young South Africans all hoping to score one of the prized 500 internships at vehicle services company Cartrack. It clogged up traffic across the busy Jan Smuts Avenue, as it wound through Rosebank. 

This played out repeatedly, every morning for the better part of a week, as thousands of well-dressed bright-eyed South Africans waited patiently for hours, clutching their short CVs.

One of the Cartrack staffers, tasked with keeping the line in order, tells Currency they expected no less than 10,000 applicants over the week for the 500 roles, largely expected to be in the call centre. 

Cartrack is owned by Karooooo, a company with arguably the worst name of any listed on the JSE now that Assore has left the bourse. And it seems bewildered by the response. 

Joshua Victor, the CEO of Cartrack South Africa, tells Currency this was the fifth learnership open day that the company has held.

“This was the highest turnout we’ve ever seen, and [it] was overwhelming even for us,” he says.

Asked why this was, Victor attributes the overwhelming response from young people to “the recognition of Cartrack as an employer”.

That seems a bit of a simplistic and self-serving analysis. More likely, what it speaks to is the visceral desperation among younger, inexperienced South Africans for any opportunity to claw their way in at the bottom. 

By November, Stats SA put unemployment for those aged between 18 and 34 at 45.5%, which it said, euphemistically, meant the youth are “vulnerable” in the job market. To put that in whole numbers, that is 4.8-million young South Africans who can’t find a job, against 5.8-million who can. 

A barren environment

Probably a more accurate assessment comes from Vestact, a money manager based in Rosebank, which told its clients that the queue, four people wide, is a reminder of just how bad South Africa’s jobs crisis is.

“It is heartbreaking to see so many people eager to work, but with not enough jobs available to meet the demand. South African economic growth has been terrible for over a decade now, meaning our economy doesn’t come close to absorbing new job seekers, let alone those who have been trying to get a job for years,” it said.

Queues like this are the natural conclusion of more than a decade of bad policy and corruption, Vestact said, which meant that not only did everything the state touch implode, but even well-run companies battled to keep their heads above water as they diverted cash to generators.

Cartrack is able to offer these learnerships because it is one of the few businesses that has thrived in this barren environment. In its most recent trading update, it said it had 2.2-million subscribers by the end of November – up 17% from the 1.9-million a year before. And its operating profit for the third quarter rose 18% to R325m.

Vestact said this desperation for work is also an indictment of our education system, which has churned out thousands of school leavers with precious few technical skills.

“The recent matric results highlighted how badly the education system lets down our youth,” it said. “Far too few pupils reach Grade 12, not to mention how dismal the results are for maths and science. Even worse, 81% of South African Grade 4 pupils, across all 11 official languages, cannot read for meaning.”

The 45.5% youth unemployment statistic is “not just a number; it represents countless young lives affected by the slow pace of economic growth limiting their employment opportunities,” writes Simcengile Ngoto, a data analyst for the SA-TIED policy group, on the UN website. 

The school curriculum just doesn’t cut it, Ngoto says, and should be overhauled to “meet current market demands” as countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have done.

This was just one queue, where people aged between 18 and 33 were asked to apply – but it’s a story that repeats itself in every big city each time a new learnership is advertised. 

The Cartrack queue also tells the lie to the “experts”, who weigh down the radio waves by bemoaning the “unwillingness” of young South Africans to work. That, needless to say, isn’t the problem; it is the lack of opportunity. 

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Rob Rose

With more than two decades in business journalism and as an author of Steinheist and The Grand Scam, Rob knows his way around a balance sheet. While editor of the Financial Mail for eight years, the title bucked the trend of falling circulation, producing award-winning news.

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