3 Years Unemployed 🤨? Kanjani 🤔?
Let us step back for a second and look at the world of work. Any job that is repetitive will soon be substituted by machines. This means if you wake up and go to your job and perform the same functions everyday, you are at risk. But don’t worry about that yet, you still have time to acquire a new skill. Check out “How to Learn Anything and Master It to Your Full Potential” to read how to take charge of your learning.
Now, I still have to address how a whole academic stays for three years at home after completing a degree. Mind you, you spent 3 years working your ass off for that piece of paper and now it’s useless at the one thing it was supposed to do, create an income stream. The first year of your unemployment was probably when you had the most energy; day in day out you wore your suit and went for interviews. I know sometimes you even wore it to go print your CV. Though eventually you ran out of steam; out of the desire to seek.
I often find myself wondering though, are we really that gullible? We have been made to believe that we cannot use our education outside of the system. For example, we believe we cannot practice as charted accountants if we are not part of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA); but how realistic is that? In the age of technology we cannot be complacent with the old rules. Who are these statutory bodies to tell you what you can and cannot do with the degree/diploma/certificate that you earned? That your hunger, tears and sleepless nights paid for?
Before I arouse the spirit of Steve Biko in you let me provide you with a possible solution for this mass grave we term “unemployment”. Firstly for the sake of your hard earned knowledge, you cannot be unemployed. Get rid of the thought that tells you working for a company is employment while there are countless forms of it, one is called being an independent contractor. This is when someone needs your services and they are willing to pay for it, they do not give a rats ass whether you are registered with South African Nursing Council, the Law Council or whatever statutory body governs your field. Whether you are doing your neighbourhood spazas books or taking care of diabetic grandma’s in your area, you are putting your skills to use. If you lucky enough after three years you can use those independent contractors as references for the experience required to get the job you always dreamed off.
Many youth owned businesses fail because academics are not willing to be associated with a “hustler” in order to grow much needed enterprises in the fight of unemployment. They therefore forgo the chance to gain experience in their chosen field of study.
The second solution is a bit more complicated. Though with so many unemployed youth one of you must have thought “fuck it let’s create our own statutory body and govern ourselves”. Now stay with me, I know we live in South Africa and you might be thinking it will never work. Though you must remember that the ANC was founded when it was illegal for black people to have aspirations in anything.
Creating a network of unemployed youth and grouping them by their fields of study in order to create the necessary channels for the creation of such bodies is the first step. The second is learning from the ones that exist but only taking those rules that ensure that whoever uses the service gets the best possible outcome with the least amount of risk. I’ve heard some of the requirements and examination standards of the ones that exist now and I’m not afraid to say, exclusion is at the top of the list.
By harnessing the power of the fact that the townships are an economy on their own, you have put yourself in a position to negotiate your place in society. Yes, you might get attacked, but look at it this way Systems don’t change when people are begging the powers that be to change it. They only change when we step away from the system and come together to create something the system cannot ignore.
Originally published at Algorhythmlab.
