If we thought the 2008 crisis was bad, it appears that 2016 is going to be worse. The metrics are scary. In summary, the normal net flow of resources is from the candidate market to the employer. The net current flow is the reverse of this with noticeable movement from the mining, EPCM, EPC, consultants, manufactures and many contractors and suppliers of goods and services. Official projections of GDP growth for this year now hover between 0,1 and 0,5%. It is evident that the bleeding is getting worse.

When one contemplates the growth rate targeted in the National Development Plan in 2012, it was to be 5% pa for the next few years -10 to 50 times the current rate! Much good was work done then by various groups to estimate the scarce skills that we would need to find to provide a basis for a development strategy. This motivated the implementation of training and mentoring models for new local feedstock and the seeking of specialists to supplement many of the specific roles. I however harboured deep suspicions that, ignoring the impact of the global recession here, SA would not get into implementing the NDP in any effective form and I have been proved right. It was naïve to have expected anything else from the ANC government. Action has never followed the reams of plans that have been hatched at great cost, only to lie fallow in the offices of incompetent bureaucracy. Now we have no money to invest. Much goes to bloated public service salaries and over inflated tender awards (corruption). The NDP would have at least triggered some velocity of money, confidence and employment.

This a time when many will take a hard look at the essentials of retirement planning or even, if that has been activated, the many strategies that have failed to keep up with the realities of changing demographics. How many of those early policies taken out at the time one started working are now worthless as a result of inflation and the influences of the broker who persuaded you it was in your interest to change to another policy more likely to broker advantage? Or with the trends of life, when work opportunities were abundant, one could shift jobs, get better remuneration, live it up more but fail to save or build an investment that actually grew in real terms? Retirement is in a crisis. Most funds are classic Ponzi schemes: new entrants needed to pay for those at the top end or the fund fails. Do we have enough young entrants for this structure?

How has the employed class been affected by the structure of the financial, and in particular, the fiat based central banking systems that have indulged in the promotion of debt based credit? This mechanism starts to explain the evident shift in political behavior: the emergence of the middle and lower-paid class in moving to the right, effectively giving the middle finger to the establishment: the rapid rise of what I believe will be called the Trump and Sanders movements in the USA in which Trump had the most primary phase votes in American history after he, as a new entrant to the field, defeated 16 of the established Washington politicians; and the Brexit action in Europe giving notice to the EU Commission that is unaccountable to the taxpayers and indulges in a command performance. It’s the gatvol syndrome at work.

The protests in SA are a similar notice by the electorate: they are fed up with watching the wealth rise to the political elites and big business at the expense of their own livelihoods. Mayors of poorly run municipalities earning R2 million-plus annual salaries (and no doubt some attractive kickbacks as well) is a blatantly overpaid politically motivated item. What qualifications do they have to oversee the expected built environment functions of the Councils? Unqualified cadres are employed in engineering roles, and the infrastructure collapses.

Engineering resources will always be needed to build the country. Perhaps we need an “Engineering Party” to make the right noises in Parliament. Until some real changes occur to the Mines and Minerals, Act, the Labour and BEE Acts for starters, SA is not going to grow to meet any semblance of wealth generation.

However, with the world of work changing so rapidly, the entrepreneur and small businesses are going to have to be supported with a reduced regulatory system. Economic freedom, but not the EFF way.

We have so much engineering talent in the retired age group that has the experience to train and mentor young entrants to the profession. With employment in reverse, it isn’t happening.