VOA慢速英語:與南非的失業(yè)危機斗爭

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Unemployment remains high in South Africa. It is one of the greatest problems for the country’s youth. So, many young people arestarting their own businesses. But not everyone who opens a business issuccessful.

Job creation was a top goal of the South African government during the firstten years after the end of the policy of racial separation in 1994. However, littleprogress has been observed in the struggle to create enough jobs.

Officials reported last month that the unemployment rate was 25.2%nationwide. That was up from a rate of 24.1% last year. More than five millionSouth Africans are unemployed. If the people who stopped looking for workwere included in the report, the rate would be 35.1%.

Twenty-four year old Sibusiso Ngcobr says he can no longer wait for thegovernment to create a job for him.

“It’s hard to find a job. You can’t sit and maybe your brains would blast out ofyour mind, because, like, you can’t sit and do nothing. You can’t wait, I have toeat, I have brothers to support, I have a family to feed.”

Instead, he and other South Africans like him are creating their owncompanies. But he says the government’s attempts to help small-businessowners like him -- people with just a basic education -- are hurt by too manyrules.

“Coming back from a previously-disadvantaged background, you don’t havesecurity, your house is just a small house, and then you go to the bank -- youhave a great, brilliant idea, they say they want surety, they want collateral --what do you have? You have nothing. You can’t say ‘I have got my high schooldiploma, here is it -- you can’t say that. So you actually have to start from thegrassroots.”

South Africans cast their votes in May 7, 2014 elections. The ruling African National Congress returned to power despite concerns over unemployment and corruptions.

Beginning from "grassroots” is what Ludwick Marishane did. As a young man, he started businesses in the northern province of Limpopo -- a place with highlevels of poverty. Some of his businesses failed.

But one day, as he and a friend were lying in the sun, he had an idea. Hisfriend did not want to wash up, and wondered why no one had created aproduct to help those who could not, or did not want to, bathe. A few yearslater, with little money, Ludwick Marishane created “Dry Bath Gel.” It savestime for some, and helps those who do not have use of clean waterthemselves.

“I scraped (together) whatever, whatever resource(s) I had available. I didn’thave a computer or resources like that so I would have to use the localcomputer café, or internet café, where it cost me about $2 an hour to use theinternet in all day. And my allowance per week was about five dollars -- that was my pocket money and lunch money.”

In his last year of high school, he wrote an 8,000-word business plan on asimple telephone, and sent it to 80 investors. But none of them would agree torisk their money on a young inventor with a product that they believed mostlyhelped poor people. So he began looking in other places.

“I looked at different sources -- the different banking loans and the differentdevelopment loans that government had made available in South Africa forsmall businesses, and I was unsuccessful -- part of it was the red tape and the amount of bureaucracy involved in trying to access those types of fundsand at the same time my business wasn’t a bankable idea.”

So he entered the product into competitions, and slowly gained investors.Now, Mr. Marishane holds legal rights to his invention. In fact, he is theyoungest patent-holder in South Africa.