Thousands of young people wait outside Athlone Stadium for job opportunities.
Image: Phiri Cawe
Lwazi Phakade
The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) released by Statistics South Africa paints a sobering picture of the state of young people in our country. Youth aged 15 to 34 make up over half of South Africa’s working-age population, approximately 20.9 million people. Yet, for many of them, particularly those between 15 and 24, the doors to economic participation remain firmly shut.
This reality was on full display this past Thursday at Athlone Stadium, where the City of Cape Town hosted a recruitment drive promising 1000 job opportunities, largely in call centres. What unfolded instead was a tragic reflection of a deepening crisis: an estimated 25 000 young people arrived, desperate for work, competing for just a fraction of available opportunities.
The result was chaos. A stampede. Young people pushing and shoving, not out of disorder, but out of desperation.
This is not merely poor planning; it is a profound indictment of the City’s approach to youth unemployment. To invite tens of thousands of unemployed youth into a confined space for a limited number of opportunities is not only reckless, it is dehumanising. It reduces the lived reality of our young people to a public spectacle.
The DA-led administration, under Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, has repeatedly made bold commitments. In 2025, the Mayor promised 300 000 jobs for young people. Yet there is no clear evidence of meaningful progress toward that target. There is also no clear figure showing direct municipal job creation at the same scale as the private sector numbers being promoted. Most of the headline figures relate to private sector enabled jobs, particularly in Business Process Outsourcing and partnerships, rather than large-scale public employment expansion. The City facilitates jobs, but it does not directly employ at scale.
Instead, what we are seeing is a model of economic growth in Cape Town that is heavily dependent on private sector led job creation, particularly in Business Process Outsourcing, international call centres, and offshore service industries. This is not incidental. It is the core of the City’s economic strategy.
Cape Town’s growth model is BPO led. Around 90 000 people are employed in call centres in the city. Approximately 10 000 jobs were added between 2023 and 2024 alone. In 2025, more than 8000 new international call centre jobs were created in South Africa within just three months, with the Western Cape leading this growth. The sector contributes roughly R21 billion to the city’s economy.
On the surface, these numbers suggest success. However, the reality is more complex and more concerning.
Most of these jobs are created by UK and US companies outsourcing work to South Africa. This is not organic local industrialisation. It is a form of global labour arbitrage. Companies are not here by accident. They are here because South Africa offers lower labour costs, favourable pricing, and service delivery at a cheaper rate compared to their home markets. Cost saving is central to this model, not incidental.
Cape Town is attractive because of its English fluency, the so-called neutral accent, and its time zone alignment with Europe, which makes operations easier for foreign markets. Government support structures, including CapeBPO and training pipelines, further reinforce this positioning.
The result is a system where the labour is local, but the value is global. This pattern extends beyond call centres. Cape Town has also become a hub for UK healthcare recruitment firms, offshore staffing agencies, and remote work placement companies. These firms use local talent to service foreign markets, while the economic value is largely externalised.
The issue, therefore, is not just where jobs come from, but the type of jobs being created.
These are largely service based, low to mid income roles that are dependent on external demand from the UK and US. They are often characterised by irregular working hours, unstable contracts, and limited upward mobility. They do not build long-term economic resilience, nor do they address the deeper structural issues within the local economy.
This is the political trade-off that must be confronted directly. The City presents this model as a success in terms of job creation, foreign investment, and youth employment. However, beneath this is a structural reality where a significant portion of the employment base is externally controlled and vulnerable.
Exchange rate fluctuations matter. Global economic downturns have immediate local consequences. Companies can relocate relatively easily. This makes the model inherently unstable.
At the same time, this model keeps wages relatively low while the cost of living continues to rise. Cape Town is increasingly positioned as a cheap labour destination within a global system, while simultaneously becoming unaffordable for the very people who live and work here. This dynamic is reinforced by broader trends, including the digital nomad economy, where the city is marketed internationally while local residents are priced out.
The strongest contradiction, however, lies in the mismatch between private sector job creation and public sector capacity.
While the City is relatively successful at enabling private sector employment pipelines, it continues to face significant backlogs in basic service delivery. Housing, sanitation, water infrastructure, and maintenance systems remain under pressure. Rapid population growth is increasing demand, yet municipal capacity has not expanded at the scale required.
Programmes such as Jobs Connect have placed approximately 3700 people into employment over several years. This stands in stark contrast to the tens of thousands of jobs created in the BPO sector within much shorter timeframes.
This imbalance cannot be ignored.
Cape Town effectively operates with a dual labour market strategy. On the one hand, there is private sector outsourcing, which dominates. It creates jobs quickly, is driven by international capital, and comes at a relatively low cost to the state. However, it does not lead to meaningful structural transformation.
On the other hand, there is the public sector, which is responsible for water, sanitation, housing, electricity, and roads, yet faces staffing shortages, capacity constraints, and persistent service backlogs.
Job creation on its own does not automatically translate into improved living conditions if the state’s capacity to deliver services is under strain.
Against this backdrop, the events at Athlone Stadium take on a deeper meaning.
A stadium filled with 25 000 young people competing for 1000 call centre jobs is not an isolated failure of planning. It is a visible expression of a broader economic model that prioritises private sector led, externally driven employment, while failing to build the internal capacity required for sustainable development.
Across Cape Town, particularly in historically marginalised black and coloured communities where crime is rampant, the crisis is even more acute. Skilled and unskilled young people remain trapped in cycles of unemployment. Graduates sit at home with qualifications but no opportunities. The promise of economic inclusion continues to evade them.
We cannot normalise this.
Young people are not statistics. They are not crowds to be managed or audiences to be mobilised for optics. They are citizens with aspirations, dignity, and a rightful claim to economic participation.
What is required is a bold, coherent, and inclusive youth employment strategy that goes beyond short-term interventions and addresses structural barriers to entry in the labour market. This includes investment in industrialisation, support for youth-owned enterprises, protection against labour exploitation, and a serious commitment to public sector job creation and capacity building.
The City must move away from publicity-driven initiatives and toward real, measurable interventions that restore hope and dignity.
But for this to happen, young people must organise, mobilise, and demand accountability.
The future cannot be built on empty promises and staged events. It must be built on concrete action, genuine opportunity, and a government that takes seriously the crisis facing its youth.
A stadium filled with 25 000 young people chasing 1000 jobs is not a success story. It is a crisis. And it demands urgent, honest leadership.
*Phakade is the ANCYL Western Cape Provincial Chairperson and writes in his personal capacity.