THE FUSE

This winter, in KwaZulu-Natal, sugar cane is standing uncut because there is nobody to harvest it. This same winter, 8.1 million South Africans are looking for work and cannot find it. In one of the most unemployed societies on Earth, work is going undone due to what seems to be a labour shortage. At the onset, this looks like a paradox within the labour market. However, the truth is that it is not a labour market with a problem, but a labour market that has stopped being a market.