Youth joblessness crisis shapes South Africa's election stakes as 5 million struggle

JOHANNESBURG — Five million young South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 were jobless in the second quarter of 2026 alone, a figure that captures the scale of an employment crisis now shaping how millions of citizens will vote in November’s local government elections.

Statistics South Africa released the numbers two weeks ago. Youth unemployment has climbed to 47.4%, meaning nearly one in every two young people cannot secure work. That single quarter saw the jobless count rise by 264,000 from the previous three months. For many young voters, the numbers have hardened into a verdict on the ANC.

The African National Congress Youth League is pushing back against that verdict. ANCYL secretary general Tsakani Shiviti spoke with the Mail and Guardian to argue that abandoning the party is the wrong response to economic hardship. Her case rests on what the ANC has already delivered, and on what she believes it can still do.

Shiviti pointed to free education as the clearest example of policy that has changed lives. “Some of us would not have gone to school if the ANC did not have policies that assist us to attend school, especially university. For me, it would have been too expensive and I would not have been able to go to school. This was done by the ANC,” she said. For young people from low-income households, that argument carries real weight.

Meanwhile, the ANCYL has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare unemployment a state of disaster, a demand that signals the organization’s own recognition that the crisis cannot be managed through ordinary policy channels.

Shiviti’s broader argument is one of engagement over exit. “We cannot abandon the ANC because we say that we are not employed. Be in the ANC and push to be in the ANC because we know when the ANC is in government, it pushes for strategic policies that assist us as young people,” she said. She acknowledged that resolving unemployment will require action from multiple stakeholders, not government alone, though she stopped short of specifying who those stakeholders are or what they would be expected to contribute.

The ANCYL’s relevance to young people has itself become a point of public debate. Last week, Thulani Ngwenya, president of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, questioned whether the ANCYL and the Young Communist League have drifted beyond their proper purpose. Invoking the legacy of the 1976 youth uprising, Ngwenya argued that young people must challenge the status quo rather than simply pledge loyalty to existing institutions. “You can’t stand up and say: ‘Everything will be fixed.’ Who will fix it? If you don’t challenge the status quo, you are a factory fault,” he said.

Shiviti dismissed such critics as people who were themselves irrelevant in their own time and now claim leadership positions. She shifted focus to what she described as concrete organizational work: ensuring young people gain representation as mayoral candidates, proportional representation councillors, and ward councillors through what the ANCYL calls a generational mix program. “We are not saying we must phase out everyone and remain young people alone. We are saying that it is good for the elderly people who have served to hand over to young people,” she explained.

The question of whether that representation translates into material improvement for the millions of young people outside the party structure remains unanswered. With November’s local elections approaching, the ANC faces a direct test of whether its youth base holds, or whether a 47.4% unemployment rate proves more persuasive than any appeal to loyalty.