My previous contribution, “South Africa Doesn’t Have an Unemployment Problem. It has a Leadership Vacuum”, was fuelled by a necessary Intellectual Courage, a conviction that truth must supersede comfort, a willingness to confront the sacred cows of conventional wisdom and systemic inertia. This intellectual courage is the bedrock of substantive thought leadership, demanding an unflinching gaze at complex realities and the articulation of solutions that are politically inconvenient but economically imperative; it is the force that propels this subsequent, equally urgent inquiry into the efficacy of corporate intervention. This piece does not seek to assign blame but to elevate the discourse on accountability, transforming a national tragedy into a strategic imperative for the executive suite.
Are the titans of South African commerce merely assuaging their conscience with philanthropic gestures, or are they recalibrating their core business models to become authentic architects of employment? The stark reality is that the present corporate response, while commendable in isolated instances, remains fundamentally insufficient to counteract the systemic haemorrhage of opportunity.
South Africa’s chronic unemployment crisis is not merely a social dilemma, it is a boardroom test of leadership, strategy, and national responsibility that no CEO can afford to ignore. South African CEOs are beginning to stir, but the scale of unemployment demands more than good intentions. It requires bold, measurable action. The question isn’t just “Are they doing enough?” It’s “Are they willing to lead the structural transformation the country needs?”
South African CEOs are under-leveraged in the fight against chronic unemployment. Some are doing commendable work; most are doing too little, too incrementally, too deferential to the status quo. Meanwhile, the crisis deepens: more than 12 million South Africans want work and cannot find it, and the labour force has expanded far faster than employment has. The question is stark: will corporate leaders remain spectators, or become architects of a new, job-intensive paradigm?
Below, I arranged the discourse into two halves. First: what prominent CEOs and corporate coalitions are doing, and the limits of what is being done. Second: what they must do, and precisely how, if they are to turn the tide. The ambition is not incremental improvement. It is the collapse of complacency and the inauguration of corporate leadership as a force for systemic renewal.
Is Unemployment Not a Market Failure That Threatens Consumer Demand, Social Stability, and Long-Term Profitability? Why South African CEOs Must Rethink Their Role
Why do South African CEOs continue to operate as if unemployment is the government’s problem alone? Is it not a market failure that threatens consumer demand, social stability, and long-term profitability?
The answer lies in a failure of strategic imagination. Most CEOs remain trapped in short-term shareholder logic, ignoring the macroeconomic dividends of employment creation. They lack the frameworks to translate unemployment into a solvable business challenge.
What if every major corporation adopted a labour absorption mandate, integrating job creation into their quarterly KPIs? What if CEOs were evaluated not just on Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation (EBITDA), but on employment elasticity, the capacity of their business models to generate sustainable jobs per unit of revenue?
Part I: What CEOs Are Doing, and Why It Is Insufficient
South Africa’s corporate fraternity often points to its commitment to inclusive growth, national rebuilding, and sustainable employment as proof of leadership. Yet beneath the surface of these proclamations lies a quieter truth, one that tests the integrity of those claims. It is time to look beyond public pledges and glossy reports to assess what corporate action has genuinely achieved, and where it still falls painfully short.
The Current Corporate Calculus: From Benevolence to Business-as-Usual
What is the prevailing strategic paradigm governing the private sector's engagement with the employment catastrophe, and does it move beyond a defensive posture? The current corporate actions are largely partitioned into two categories: statutory compliance with the Skills Development Levy (SDL) and voluntary, often siloed, corporate social investment (CSI) initiatives. The SDL compels businesses to invest in skills development, a mechanism that, while intended to cultivate a more proficient labour pool, frequently becomes an administrative exercise focused on accreditation rather than genuine, demand-led upskilling; this approach often prioritises ticking regulatory boxes over creating a quantum leap in deployable human capital.
Furthermore, many companies dedicate resources to internships, learnerships, and nascent enterprise development funds, which are laudable acts of benevolence yet rarely possess the requisite scale or structural integration to address the gargantuan chasm between labour supply and market demand.
Do these initiatives truly shift the macroeconomic dial, or do they simply offer a limited, highly competitive sanctuary to a statistically insignificant fraction of the unemployed millions? The inescapable conclusion is that the current engagement is often a peripheral activity, a secondary function divorced from the primary engine of business strategy, representing a tactical palliative rather than the radical structural reformation that the crisis demands from the ultimate drivers of capital accumulation.
Public Pledges and Symbolic Solidarity: The Limits of Virtue Signalling
In July 2023, over 115 South African CEOs signed a “pledge to build the country”, affirming their commitment to inclusive growth and strategic interventions. The sum of assets controlled by signatories exceeds R11 trillion, with a workforce in excess of 1.2 million. Yet precisely what these CEOs have done to transform the unemployment landscape is often vague. The rhetoric is grand; the operational follow-through is modest.
Many CEOs treat unemployment as a macro policy challenge to be left to government, while confining themselves to occasional philanthropy or small-scale upskilling programmes. Such interventions, while well-intentioned, are insufficient in scale or integration to shift the structural trajectory of joblessness.
Corporate-Backed Youth Employment Programmes: Yes, But Not Everywhere, and Often Too Shallow
On the positive side, several major corporations have participated in the Youth Employment Service (YES) programme, launched in 2018 as a public-private initiative. YES has placed tens of thousands of young people in structured internships, sometimes converting many into permanent roles. For instance, Nedbank has publicly committed to using YES as a channel to hire youth and to integrate them into the bank’s operations. Such programmes are laudable, but they suffer from two key constraints:
(a) They reach only a fraction of the youth in need, hence the continued high youth unemployment rate at 46.1% in the second quarter of 2025 (Stats SA).
(b) The conversion to permanent employment often depends on talent fit and not on a deliberate absorption strategy.
(c) Consequently, its impact is transient and non-transformational.
Other firms have instituted training academies, apprenticeships, and graduate development tracks. But in many cases, the intake is highly selective, favouring degree-holders or aspirants who already possess baseline social capital. The truly marginalised; those who dropped out of school, who live in remote or peripheral zones, who lack networks, remain excluded by design or default.
CEOs have failed to integrate unemployment reduction into their core business models, preferring to treat it as a peripheral obligation.
Where is the industrial-scale thinking? Where are the multi-sectoral alliances that could reconfigure labour markets? Where is the CEO-led coalition that treats unemployment not as a social burden, but as a strategic imperative?
Collaborations with Nonprofits and Social Enterprises: Promising but Undercapitalised
Some corporate leaders have partnered with entities such as the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, which specialises in bridging job-seekers and employers and designing demand-driven work placements. Corporations offer support through sponsoring placement slots, co-funding training, or offering mentorship. But again, the scale is too limited relative to the magnitude of need.
Moreover, corporates tend to underinvest in the long tail of support, counselling, psychosocial support, transport subsidies, micro-financing for entrepreneurial attempts, which are critical to make placements sustainable and reduce dropouts.
A Tepid Engagement: Why Current Measures Lack Transformative Velocity
Why has the collective corporate effort, despite billions of Rands expended, failed to achieve the necessary transformative velocity required to re-engineer the labour market? The critical failure lies in the disconnect between corporate investment and the immediate, scalable needs of the economy, particularly the urgent requirement for job-creating growth in labour-absorbing sectors.
Too much emphasis is placed on highly abstract, future-facing skills training; digital literacy and esoteric coding programmes, while neglecting the fundamental, high-volume employment opportunities latent in construction, logistics, and value-add manufacturing. Is it not a fundamental flaw in corporate governance when a firm's operational planning optimises for efficiency and automation, thus diminishing its employment footprint, only for its CSI budget to attempt to remedy the very unemployment it helped to create?
This internal cognitive dissonance is crippling the potential for systemic impact. The private sector, which possesses the singular capacity to catalyse growth, as evidenced by the collaboration of CEOs and the government in recent years to alleviate crises like energy shortages, a welcome, albeit overdue engagement, has been reticent to internalise the unemployment crisis as a core operational risk demanding a proportional, business-centric response. The time for viewing job creation as a philanthropic appendage is over; it must be recognised as an inextricable function of sustainable value creation.
The Elephant in The Boardroom: Risk Aversion, Short-Termism, and Internal Silos
Why has corporate leadership been so timid? Because CEOs often operate under intense short-term pressure: quarterly earnings, shareholder expectations, and regulatory burdens. The idea of embedding social impact at scale, especially in a country with unstable infrastructure, inconsistent policy, and corruption risks, appears too risky. Initiatives are stranded in CSR units, siloed away from core business strategy, rather than being integrated into the centre-of-business models.
In many instances, the corporate tax, capital allocation, and investment incentives favour capital-intensive, technology-driven approaches with low labour absorption. The prevailing mindset prizes automation, lean staffing, and outsourcing, precisely the trends that exacerbate unemployment rather than alleviate it.
The Result: Marginal Shifts, Not Structural Change
Thus, what CEOs are doing is mostly incremental and peripheral. Small pools of youth gain opportunity. A handful of communities are touched. But the system, the macro-economic fabric of the country, remains resistant. The unrelenting daily job loss continues. The official unemployment rate in South Africa was 33.2% in the second quarter of 2025, and the expanded unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2025 was 42.9%. Every day, new entrants flood an economy that refuses to absorb them. The business sector, despite capacity and capital, remains under-mobilised as a force of inclusion.
That said, this is not a counsel of despair. It is a challenge to scale.
Part II: What CEOs Should Do, A Blueprint for High-Impact Corporate Architecture
I now propose bold, structural, high-leverage actions that CEOs, in South Africa and globally, must adopt if they are to be worthy of the term “leader” in this moment.
1. Re-architect business models around job intensity
Instead of designing businesses to be asset-light and labour-lean, companies should adopt dual pathways: one geared for efficiency, and another, in high-unemployment contexts, purposefully designed for labour absorption. For instance, manufacturing or assembly operations can be co-located in high-unemployment zones; service operations (call centres, logistics, care economies) can be decentralised to rural or township nodes. Some global firms already do this: a European appliance manufacturer, for example, established an assembly line in an economically depressed region in Lithuania, with heavy human-intensive processes, thereby defying the impulse to automate fully.
CEOs should mandate that a fixed proportion, say 10–20 percent, of incremental expansion or capex must be labour-intensive. That becomes a strategic metric, reported quarterly. That way, job creation is baked into business planning, not left to goodwill.
2. Forge industrial ecosystems with SMEs and shared services to create measurable 'Job Multiplier Effect'
No large corporation should operate in isolation. A CEO can catalyse an entire local supply and service ecosystem. For example, a mining conglomerate might cluster micro-suppliers, transport/logistics firms, food services, and digital support firms around its operations, with guaranteed procurement commitments to local small businesses. By doing so, the CEO not only amplifies employment within his own organisation but creates multiplier jobs across the network.
Look at it this way, the path forward requires a transition from isolated ‘training’ to systemic economic inclusion, mandating that every investment decision be scrutinised not only for financial returns but also for its measurable 'Job Multiplier Effect'. CEOs must architect business models that explicitly incentivise labour-intensive expansion, particularly within the value chains of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are globally recognised as the primary engines of job creation.
Consider the case of a major global retailer, such as Walmart (USA), which strategically commits to sourcing a significant percentage of its products from local suppliers, thereby intentionally stimulating local manufacturing and logistics ecosystems; this is a tangible example of integrating social impact into procurement strategy.
Another global example is the Indian conglomerate Tata, which has pioneered such local cluster models: its automotive and steel operations anchor supplier ecosystems across India, with shared infrastructure, training centres, and supplier incubation.
Similarly, CEOs in South Africa should commit corporate procurement budgets (say 30–50 percent over time) to local supplier development, with capacity building, bridging finance, and shared R&D support. They should do this by setting mandated, auditable targets for procuring services from newly established, high-labour-absorption SMEs, effectively ‘outsourcing’ job creation to enterprises where labour costs can be more flexibly managed and the potential for rapid scaling is highest. This is not charity; it is enlightened self-interest, securing a more stable, affluent, and less volatile consumer base for the future.
3. Embed transitional gateways and absorptive pathways
CEOs must recognise that many job seekers are not immediately job-ready. They must invest in “gateway to work” programmes such as bridging training, soft skills, psychosocial support, modular micro-credentials, and guarantee downstream absorption: either in the company or in partner firms.
This means corporate leaders should allocate risk capital for stipend-supported training cohorts, then commit themselves as anchor employers (or guarantors) to absorb a defined share (e.g., 40–60 percent). The rest can be deployed into SME partners or further incubation. This approach removes the classic “mismatch” excuse: the corporation takes risk, builds capacity, and internalises talent development.
4. Reframe and accelerate shared value innovation in green, care, digital, and informal sectors
CEOs should push beyond their comfort zones into sectors of latent potential: renewable energy roll-outs, elder care and disability care, digital content, repair economies, circular economies, and even reimagined informal sectors. These sectors are labour-intensive by nature. A global telecom company, for instance, might seed a “digital artisan network” that trains and on-boards micro entrepreneurs in content moderation, localisation, app maintenance, et cetera. Simultaneously, an energy company could install decentralised clean energy microgrids in poor communities, each grid commissioning dozens or hundreds of local installers, maintainers, and micro-contractors.
In South Africa specifically, CEOs must lobby for and invest in green industrialisation, for instance, locally assembled solar and battery systems, electrification networks, and low-carbon retrofitting. These are capital-dense domains that still require high labour absorption in installation, maintenance, training, and logistics.
5. Champion policy risk capital and systemic institutional reform
Corporate leaders must stop hiding behind regulatory inertia. They must deploy their influence. They should lead coalitions that demand legislative flexibility, such as labour market modifications, tax incentives for job absorption, de-risking zones, infrastructure investments, and planning reform. A united corporate front, offering co-investment in infrastructure and human capital, can shift political calculations.
For instance, in 2025, Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) launched a “Reform Tracker” monitoring 240 government deliverables to push accountability. CEOs must deepen participation there, using their capital to match government investment and demanding reciprocal policy concessions.
At the same time, firms can internalise risk by creating “employment guarantee funds”. These are reserves that absorb macro-shock when absorption lags, tying them to bond issuance or social impact capital.
6. Build multi-sector employer coalitions and demand syndicates
One firm acting alone may falter. But if CEOs across sectors (mining, finance, agriculture, manufacturing, tech) coordinate demand for absorption, then job creation becomes systemic. They can syndicate their absorption commitments: e.g. commit an aggregate of 100,000 new job slots across partner firms. They can synchronise training standards, modular credentials, and portability across sectors.
A good example abroad is the “Employer Pledge” in the UK (e.g. apprenticeships), where major firms commit to set quotas and share infrastructure. In South Africa, the 115-CEO pledge is a start, but what is needed is binding, audited, measurable absorption pledges. No more vague declarations.
7. Institutionalise impact metrics, accountability, and transparency
Every CEO should adopt a “Jobs Created per Rand Invested” metric, published publicly. The board should have a “Job Creation Oversight Committee.” Impact should be audited and benchmarked (domestically and globally). The concept is simple: the same rigour applied to profit, cost, and ROI must apply to social impact. Otherwise, impact initiatives will recede as non-core when times get tough.
8. Cultivate local leadership and entrepreneurship from within communities
An essential complement to top-down programmes is bottom-up emergent leadership. CEOs should fund and mentor micro-incubators in impoverished communities, commit seed equity, mentorship, and market linkage. The corporate partner does not run the enterprises; it helps nurture them from within. Thus, the job creation lever is multiplied across generations.
Global Benchmarks, Case Studies and Illustrations: What World-Class CEOs Are Doing Differently
Globally, visionary CEOs are engineering employment ecosystems, not merely funding them.
• Empowerment of rural entrepreneurs: In Kenya, Safaricom’s CEO Peter Ndegwa has embedded employment creation into the company’s core innovation strategy, launching platforms like Digifarm to empower rural entrepreneurs.
• Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator (South Africa): A social enterprise that has matched millions of youths with employers, designing data-driven placement interventions and demand-led training. Partnerships with corporates have yielded measurable job absorption.
• YES Programme (South Africa): The business-led, large-scale internship initiative places youth in corporates; success depends on corporate absorption. Oversight is needed to ensure that the “exit rate” into permanent employment remains high.
• European industrial clusters: Numerous European firms anchor supplier ecosystems, from automotive to electronics, enabling decentralised development and high local employment.
• Indian Tata cluster model: In the Indian context, Tata has long created supplier ecosystems, shared training infrastructure, and guaranteed procurement, which stimulates SME employment in remote regions.
These examples show that bold corporate anchoring of demand, supply, and ecosystem support can shift structural employment outcomes.
Barriers and Objections, and How to Overcome Them
“Risk is too high.” True, but the greater risk is systemic collapse: a disposable youth class, rising instability, reputational blowback, and consumer base shrinkage. CEOs should form risk pools, co-invest, and demand government backup instruments (e.g. employment guarantees, tax buffers).
“We lack capacity or expertise.” Then partner. Corporates should embed secondments into nonprofits, universities, social enterprises. They can also hire social innovation officers, diffusion labs, and incubator cells within their organisations.
“Labour laws prevent flexibility.” Then lead the reform conversation. CEOs must not be reticent in pushing for adaptive labour frameworks, conditional subsidies, or regulated flexibility for purpose-driven absorption programmes.
“We can’t bear cost in downturns.” Partly true, so corporate absorption programmes should be countercyclical, with buffers and reserves (like insurance). If every large enterprise committed a fraction of capex to job creation, the macro signal would shift fundamentals.
Food for Thought: Is Profit Still Noble If It Is Built on Exclusion?
Can a CEO claim strategic brilliance while presiding over a nation where 42 percent of adults are unemployed? Is it ethical to optimise shareholder value while the societal fabric disintegrates? These are not rhetorical indulgences. They are existential questions for modern capitalism.
The moral legitimacy of corporate leadership now hinges on its capacity to generate inclusive prosperity. Anything less is strategic cowardice.
A Call to Elite Action: Not Elite Comfort
South African CEOs must choose: remain custodians of a broken system, or become architects of a new economic order. The time for symbolic gestures is over. The time for strategic employment engineering has arrived.
To global billionaires, tech lords, and policy shapers: do not wait for governments to solve what markets have broken. You possess the capital, the platforms, and the influence to rewire labour systems. Use them.
To South African CEOs: your legacy will not be measured by quarterly profits, but by the number of lives you dignified with work.
The question is no longer whether you can act. It is whether you will. You possess capital, strategic acumen, influence, infrastructure, and institutional voice. You have the capacity to rewire industries and reforge society.
If you do not step into this labour-absorbing mandate, others will, and the future will judge you as bystanders, not architects. But if you do, you will be written into history as the generation of corporate giants who redefined purpose.
Therefore: craft your next capital allocation to embed job creation, convene your peer CEOs into binding absorption pacts, demand policy reciprocity, and institutionalise jobs as a core pillar of corporate ROI. Let your legacy be this: that South Africa’s sacrifice was met in kind with corporate resolve. The moral and economic dividends will outlast any quarterly report.
The time has come for CEOs to stop managing in the margins, and begin leading in the job-intensive centre. Will you rise to it?
Images by Bandile Ndzishe of Bandzishe Group
About bandile ndzishe
Bandile Ndzishe is the CEO, Founder, and Global Consulting CMO of Bandzishe Group, a premier global consulting firm distinguished for pioneering strategic marketing innovations and driving transformative market solutions worldwide. He holds three business administration degrees: an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and an Associate of Science in Business Administration.
With over 29 years of hands-on expertise in marketing strategy, Bandile is recognised as a leading authority across the trifecta of Strategic Marketing, Daily Marketing Management, and Digital Marketing. He is also recognised as a prolific growth driver and a seasoned CMO-level marketer.
Bandile has earned a strong reputation for delivering strategic marketing and management services that guarantee measurable business results. His proven ability to drive growth and consistently achieve impactful outcomes has established him as a well-respected figure in the industry.
As an AI-empowered and an AI-powered marketer, I bring two distinct strengths to the table: empowered by AI to achieve my marketing goals more effectively, whilst leveraging AI as a tool to enhance my marketing efforts to deliver the desired growth results. My professional focus resides at the nexus of artificial intelligence and strategic marketing, where I explore the profound and enduring synergy between algorithmic intelligence and market engagement.
Rather than pursuing ephemeral trends, I examine the fundamental tenets of cognitive augmentation within marketing paradigms. I analyse how AI's capacity for predictive analytics, bespoke personalisation, and autonomous optimisation precipitates a transformative evolution in consumer interaction and brand stewardship. By extension, I seek to comprehend the strategic applications of artificial intelligence in empowering human capability and fostering innovation for sustainable societal advancement.
In essence, I explore how AI augments human decision-making in both marketing and other domains of life. This is not merely an interest in technological novelty, but a rigorous investigation into the strategic implications of AI's integration into the contemporary principles of marketing practice and its potential to reshape decision-making frameworks, enhance strategic foresight, and influence outcomes in diverse areas beyond the marketing sphere.