Unemployed doctor Sunhera Sukdeo writes in Daily Maverick that she's unable to find work. She displays proudful entitlement that because she's a doctor and worked hard for it, she ought to have a job, and a government post at that.
Sukdeo is just one of 7.8 million unemployed people in the country, not including discouraged jobseekers, and among about 10% unemployed graduates and other tertiary, also a large number. However, 800 unemployed doctors is negligible to absolute and relative (healthcare workers only) employment rates and against the number of registered doctors in the country - 46 000 (2019).
Two years ago my GP's daughter, a newly qualified neurologist (master's degree UCT) couldn't find a government job - they weren't hiring. So she opened her own practice or joined an existing one. This does take money but nowhere is it stated government must employ any and all jobseekers. Already government employs far too many people placing a huge strain - 32% of total spending - on the fiscus.
While South Africa does not have the recommended doctor-patient ratio, the real shortage is in public health with private healthcare well catered for. Financially SA is struggling because of 30 years of ANC government incompetence, mismanagement and corruption which has had an impact on all budgets (except on ministerial and employee benefits). And it's getting worse. One cannot wish this fact away.
Despite Sukdeo raising a problem affecting even an elite skill, her story is replete with self-pity and entitlement. Significantly, she does not write for nor is her experience anything like the general unemployed population's. DM gave her a platform it would not other jobseekers, the assumption being medicine is superior to other essential skills. Even commentators to her article were sympathetic. But what about unemployed engineers, vets, artisans and so on?
I empathise with Sukdeo because I've been where she is, not as a doctor but an experienced graduate with another essential skill. A decade ago I was supposedly retrenched for cost, their way of saying it was inconvenient to have me around. The two prospective employers who bothered to reply to my applications, including alma mater UCT for an administrative job, said they'd received numerous - dozens, hundreds - of applications from "highly qualified people". I never found another job and gave up.
I have a master's degree so there are numerous skilled unemployed and unemployable people out there. This was not my first time facing long-term unemployment as a (post)graduate.
Sukdeo is facing the dilemma of all job entrants except she already had three years - internship and community service - at well-paid state postings. Her medical degree does not give her immunity from the despair most jobseekers face but she's better off than the majority. In fact, out of only 800 unemployed doctors, she's in a very good position - among the elite of all employable persons - and will likely find work soon either as self-employed, locum or employee. Also she has options denied many jobseekers - her qualification is eminently transferable and universally in demand. Difficult as it might be, she could take it abroad.
In this country unemployment is not seen as the disaster it really is. Politicians talk about it in sound bites and empty promises; economists and sociologists in theory and graphs, and media, well, to even well-intentioned ones like DM it's a nebulous concept like crime reports. I can't recall an in-depth article anyway about what it means to be, not only unemployed, but long-term unemployed.
But anyone who's been unemployed, knows what it's like: despair, depression, humiliation, embarrassment, anger, little or no self-confidence and dignity are among the emotions. Practically, the effects can be seen among applicants at any SASSA office and especially, but not exclusively, in the townships. Mostly, though, they're invisible to society.
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