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MISA comment - Unemployment is a catastrophe, and the state is making it worse by increasing repo rates

Sep 28, 2026 MISA, the Motor Industry Staff Association, Martlé Keyter, unemployment crisis, MISAtv, Duma Gqubule

MISA comment - Unemployment is a catastrophe, and the state is making it worse by increasing repo rates

MISA, the Motor Industry Staff Association (MISA), says South Africa’s unemployment crisis has reached catastrophic levels, and that recent decisions by the state are deepening it rather than turning it around. In the latest interview on MISAtv, MISA spoke to independent economist Duma Gqubule, a leading and long‑standing critic of government’s record on jobs. Gqubule argued that South Africa is doing far too little in the face of one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.

His assessment was stark. Over the past 17 years, South Africa has created only about two million jobs, while the labour force grows by 600,000 to 700,000 people every year. He rejected the idea that the country suffers from a “skills mismatch,” pointing out that unemployed graduate doctors and nurses sit at home while public hospitals face severe shortages of exactly those skills. “We need a 4 to 6% GDP growth rate just for the 600,000 who are joining the workforce,” Gqubule said. “Even with a growth rate of 6% we will still have high unemployment, so we have to do more than just grow the econ-omy faster. We need strong industrial policies to create labour‑intensive sectors. We have to rapidly expand public employment programmes.”

Gqubule was sharply critical of austerity. Cutting public spending on infrastructure, healthcare and education, he argued, makes unemployment worse, because when the state fails to invest in roads and railways, the private sector will not invest either. He also criticised the cancellation of the Presidential Employment Stimulus, which created over two million work opportunities.

Against this backdrop, MISA is deeply concerned by the South African Reserve Bank’s decision on 23 September 2026 to raise the repo rate by 25 basis points, from 7% to 7.25%, the second increase this year. As the Institute for Economic Justice has noted, much of South Africa’s inflation is imported, driven by fuel and global supply shocks that higher rates cannot address.

The hike simply raises the cost of borrowing into an economy that contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter of 2026. For the retail motor sector, the damage is direct. Higher rates make vehicle finance more expensive, cooling showroom demand and threatening the dealerships, workshops and aftermarket businesses that employ over 500,000 people across the value chain. It also hits workers at home, adding to vehicle repayments when households are already stretched.

“Government austerity and rising interest rates are a double blow to workers,” says Martlé Keyter, CEO: Operations at MISA. “One starves the economy of the investment that creates jobs, the other raises the cost of everything from a home loan to a car. MISA has always opposed measures that deepen poverty. We are calling for public investment and job creation to be placed at the centre of economic policy, because our members and their families cannot keep absorbing the cost of this crisis.”

The latest MISAtv link is below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW_4qGBpysc&t=4s

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