There is a growing narrative in political discourse that South African universities are failing, that they are producing graduates who are not equipped for the demands of the modern economy.
It is a narrative repeated often enough to sound convincing. Yet it collapses under scrutiny.
The evidence does not point to a lack of skills — it points to a lack of opportunity, a mismatch between education and economic structure, and a failure to build an economy capable of absorbing the very talent the country is producing.
South Africa today has one of the most educated youth populations in its history.
More young people complete matric and access higher education than at any other time in the country’s past.
Yet the unemployment figures tell a troubling story.
Youth unemployment remains extremely high, standing at approximately 46.1% in 2025 and close to 45.8% in early 2026, with millions of young people unable to find work.
This reality is often used to justify the claim that young people are “unskilled,” but such an interpretation ignores a critical fact — university graduates consistently experience lower unemployment rates than other groups.
This is not a system producing failure.
It is a system producing capability that the economy is failing to utilise.
The structural nature of this crisis becomes even clearer when one considers geography.
Economic activity in South Africa remains heavily concentrated in urban centres, while rural provinces such as the Eastern Cape continue to experience some of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
In these regions, young people are not only unemployed, they are often disconnected from meaningful economic participation altogether, with limited access to functioning industries or labour markets.
The issue is therefore not simply unemployment; it is exclusion.
Nowhere is this reality more stark than in towns such as Dimbaza.
When the post-apartheid government phased out the incentives that had sustained its factories, the consequences were immediate and devastating.
More than 100 factories that once formed the backbone of the local economy shut down or relocated, wiping out over 2,000 direct manufacturing jobs and triggering a sharp economic collapse.
With factory wages gone, the ripple effects spread quickly. Small businesses, retailers and informal traders lost their customer base, forcing many to close.
The local economy was hollowed out, leaving a community increasingly dependent on social grants for survival.
Today the remains of those factories, many vandalised or repurposed, stand as a stark reminder of an industrial system that once sustained livelihoods but has since largely disappeared.
It is against this backdrop that the industrialisation of rural and small towns becomes both urgent and necessary.
South Africa already has the foundations in place.
More than 200 industrial parks exist across the country, many of them located in former homeland areas where they were originally designed to stimulate manufacturing and employment.
These spaces were intended to decentralise growth, reduce migration pressures on cities, and create jobs closer to where people live.
Yet today, too many of these industrial parks remain underutilised or neglected, despite their existing infrastructure, roads, transport links and factory buildings.
At the same time, the country continues to concentrate investment in already saturated urban economies, where competition is high and job creation has not kept pace with population growth.
The result is a cycle of urbanisation without industrial expansion and unemployment without meaningful intervention.
Despite having more than 200 industrial parks and a dedicated Special Economic Zone programme, job creation through these initiatives remains modest, relative to their potential.
This is not because the model itself is flawed, but because its implementation has been inconsistent and insufficiently scaled.
Another challenge in South Africa is that the government allows Chinese products to flood the local market, even though they are not manufactured within the country.
This negatively affects local manufacturing industries, including car production, forcing some companies to reduce production or shift their focus to retail instead.
As a result, fewer jobs are created and many young people are left unemployed.
Furthermore, the government does not strongly encourage or support South Africans to develop and manufacture their own vehicles.
Instead, people are indirectly influenced to consume products that are imported from other countries.
Government targets of creating just over 100,000 jobs through industrial and investment programmes reflect both ambition and limitation.
In a country where millions of young people are unemployed, incremental progress is not enough.
What is required is a decisive shift towards large-scale, sustained industrialisation.
At the same time, young people face systemic barriers beyond the availability of jobs.
One of the most persistent challenges is the requirement for work experience, something many graduates have not yet had the opportunity to gain.
This creates a cycle of exclusion — young people cannot find work because they lack experience, and cannot gain experience because they cannot find work.
This is not a failure of education, it is a failure of transition.
Young people are not asking for handouts.
They are asking for an economy that recognises their potential and creates space for them to contribute, an economy where industries function, towns thrive and policies deliberately include them.
South Africa’s youth are not unskilled.
They are underutilised, underserved and too often overlooked.
The real question is not whether they are ready for the economy — it is whether the economy is ready for them.
Siphiwo Fumbeza
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