The following explanation for South Africa's persistently high unemployment was posted on Reddit/AskSocialScience substack by a University of Cape Town MPhil PPE student. It's one of the more cogent I've encountered and unlike the trite reasons offered by government, media and mainstream analysts: This is a bit of a simplification, but essentially, the problem boils down to one of labour absorption: the private sector in SA is too small to employ the entire South African labour force. The reason for this can be traced back to the early development of the South African economy, specifically during the colonial and subsequent Apartheid era. Early industry in SA (here meaning mining) was developed around the exploitation of African labour, which was used as a readily available source of cheap labour to man a labour-intensive industry. Subsequent government policy largely backed this approach, setting up institutions like the homelands system as a means to provide a ready sou...