Youth unemployment in South Africa: The reality behind Tintswalo

When President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks of “Tintswalo,” the fictional child born in 1994 meant to embody the promise of democracy, he invites us to believe a story of progress, opportunity, and gradual improvement. But for millions of young South Africans, Tintswalo is not a symbol of hope. Tintswalo is a lie.

South Africa today has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world. Even more damning, it has one of the highest rates of unemployed graduates globally. These are not abstract statistics; they represent wasted lives, deferred dreams, and a generation systematically excluded from the economy. To speak of Tintswalo without confronting this reality is not optimism - it is denial. The President cannot plausibly claim ignorance. The data is public, relentless, and unforgiving. More than six out of ten young people who want work cannot find it. Graduates sold the promise that education is the pathway out of poverty, but sit at home with degrees that have become expensive ornaments. If this is Tintswalo’s inheritance, then democracy has failed its youngest citizens.

What makes this crisis particularly cruel is that it is not accidental. It is the outcome of policy choices, weak governance, and an economic model that treats young people as surplus population rather than productive human capital. While government speeches celebrate “demographic dividends,” the lived experience of the youth is one of exclusion from labour markets, skills pipelines that do not connect to jobs, and a state that seems more competent at issuing slogans than creating work. The language used by the government reveals the depth of the problem. Youth unemployment is framed as a “challenge,” a “legacy issue,” or a “structural constraint.” Rarely is it described for what it truly is - a national emergency. No country can remain stable when the majority of its young people are locked out of economic participation. No society can claim moral legitimacy when education leads not to opportunity but to despair.

By failing to act decisively, the state has effectively transformed young people from human capital into what the economy treats as human waste - discarded, idle, and invisible. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. An economy that cannot absorb its educated youth is an economy in decay. A government that normalises this condition is complicit in the erosion of social cohesion. The consequences are already visible. Rising crime, mental health crises, substance abuse, and political radicalisation do not emerge in a vacuum. They grow where hope has been systematically stripped away. When young people are told to “be patient” year after year, what they hear is that their lives are expendable. When graduates are told to “volunteer” or accept unpaid internships indefinitely, what they learn is that their labour has no value.

President Ramaphosa often speaks about social compacts and shared responsibility. But responsibility cannot be shared equally when power is not. The state controls industrial policy, public procurement, education alignment, and labour market regulation. It is the government that has failed to leverage these tools at scale. It is the government that continues to prioritise political stability over economic inclusion, and consensus over courage.

Tintswalo deserved more than symbolic speeches. Tintswalo deserved an economy that grows faster than population growth, a state that rewards innovation rather than patronage, and a labour market that does not punish youth for lack of “experience” in a country that refuses to give them any. Above all, Tintswalo deserved honesty. If the President is aware of the depth of this crisis - and there is no credible argument that he is not - then the question is no longer one of awareness, but of accountability. History will not judge this administration by its intentions or its rhetoric, but by whether it rescued a generation from economic exclusion. Until then, Tintswalo is not a story of freedom fulfilled. Tintswalo is the face of a broken promise.