Unemployment rears its ugly face
An investigation into high proportions of unemployment in the second city of Francistown by the Midweek Sun has unearthed the different faces of joblessness faced by youth.
Tshiamo Morobosi (Bachelor of Arts Mass Communication, Curtin University of Technology in Australia): “The situation of unemployment in this country is a serious concern as it breeds fraudsters who in the long run will become a thorn on the side government. Due to unemployment graduates of information technology (IT) have now resorted to cyber fraud as they use the skills they have acquired at school to rob people including the government.”
He added that most of the unemployed graduates and school drop-outs are from poor families and they get involved in crime out of desperation rather than choice. Youths are involved in criminal acts such as human trafficking, cash fraud and illicit drugs, he says.
Asked how he is surviving without a job, Morobosi said that he is using the knowledge he acquired abroad to make ends meet by helping mass media communication companies in the city on a temporary basis. “Re tshela ka di piece job ntate go kwakwaletse,” he said.
Anonymous* is a University of Botswana graduate and a confessed drug lord. He is the only child armed with a degree in his family. He was compelled by unemployment to push drugs for other drug lords until he became one of them.
“I have a Bachelor’s degree in humanities and a post graduate degree in education. After my graduation more than a decade ago, I realised that there are no teaching vacancies in this country. I was embarrassed to continue depending on my elderly mother who survived on Ipelegeng. A friend of mine from the university paid me a visit. He was driving a fancy car but was not working. He introduced me to the trafficking of Marijuana from Swaziland across South Africa into Botswana,” he revealed.
He said that although the business of illegal drug trafficking is risky he has been able to evade arrest because the police assist the culprits for a fee. ‘I have since become a drug lord and I am making money as I have also realised that even some top security officers are drug mafias. This makes our circle unbreakable.
Drugs destroy lives but we can’t just let ourselves and our children starve due to unemployment. Our graduate sisters have also been turned into sex toys. If they can’t find a job definitely they will find criminals and sugar daddies loaded with cash to support them through the rough patch of joblessness,’’ he said.
In fact even some jobless female graduates have also resorted to peddling drugs more especially cocaine, marijuana, mandrax and many others which are easy to conceal.
Mmasabata Thuso who completed her Form 5 in 2012 but could not qualify for government sponsorship did not wallow in sorrow and self-pity when face with joblessness. She decided to secretly understudy her elder sister who was a graduate in Beauty therapy and specialising in manicure.
“I noticed that my sister was always busy shaping and colouring toes and finger nails for a living and since I had nothing to do by then, I engrossed myself into studying some of her books and learning the basic aspects of shaping and decorating nails. After a very short period, I was good at the trade that most of my peers started bothering me to open a mini nail shop. I obliged and moved into town where I am currently eking out a living from nails. I have also started saving some money so that I can enroll at one of the local institutions to study for a certificate in beauty therapy with the aim of opening my own beauty and massaging spar,” she said.
Thuso’s advice to the youth is to find what they are good at doing and focus their attention on it in order to beat the stubborn monster that is unemployment.
