Thousand of unemployed youths in Tshwane march to factories in Rosslyn on Thursday demanding jobs.
The march was led by an organisation known as Re Yaga Community Projects.
The march was supported by 22 civic movements across Tshwane and Gauteng from IBCM, Defend SA, Soil of Africa, SANCO,Cyril Must Fall movements amongst others.
The march started at Afrid and ended at a local car-manufacturing company BMW.
The organisation hand over memorandum to more than 10 companies.
Unemployed young and old people march with their CV’s.
Founder and President of Re Yaga Community Projects, Mpho Kgosana complained about the monopoly capitalism that is used at the Rosslyn factories because it prevents local youth from being employed there.
“The unemployed youths have been asked to bring their Curriculum Vitae (CVs) to the march so that they will be handed to the owners of the said firms and factories at some time in the future and now,” he said.
“We won’t be handing CVs to the owners of the firms and factories today but what we are going to do is that we are going to first assess or make a feasibility study of the said CVs to see how many technicians and IT specialists we have because we want to avoid a situation whereby we remove technicians from their jobs only to find out later that there are no technicians among the people who have submitted CVs,” he said.
“For business people it does not make common sense for a technician to be removed with no one being able to replace them; this scenario would disrupt their business activities and we don’t want to do that,” he said.
Kgosana said from here they will enter into negotiations with the owners of the firms and factories and hear from them as to who among their foreign employees they are willing to let go off and who they can’t get rid of with immediate effect.
“These owners should have transferred skills to local South African youth a long time ago but since they have failed to do that, we will give them three months to transfer the said skills,” enthused Kgosana.
One of the unemployed youths who joined the march, Mpendulo Dlamini from Soshanguve told Tshwane Talks that he hope Rosslyn firms hire them and must stop hiring illegal foreigners and hope to get a job.
“I wanna thanked all the civic movements for making this march happen and I believe that I will get a job and work for my family,” Thabo Nkuna from Ga-rankuwa said.
Ponagalo Thabani, also from Soshanguve, said they have been shunted from pillar to post and that he is very much doubtful that he would get a job at the Rosslyn firms and factories.
“We have been asked to put our CVs into the back of a van yet they (the CVs) have not been taken to the car manufacturing company as promised,” he said.
Copy of Memorandum: