We caught up with CEOs, mayors and President Cyril Ramaphosa himself on the sidelines of News24’s flagship jobs summit to ask them about their first job, as well as their reactions to Day 2 in our series Off the Record.

Day 2 at News24’s On the Record summit on job creation was another flurry of activity and thought-provoking sessions.

Behind the scenes, on the sidelines of the event and at the lunch table, many more had opinions, both light and serious, on what we can do as South Africans to create 5 million more jobs in 10 years.

From musing on their first-ever jobs to considering more serious topics like the effect of crime, the efficacy of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) or whether BEE is working, we caught up with some prominent names to ask for their reactions to Day 2’s panels.

And first up, News24’s Chelsea Ogilvie filmed a series of videos asking our guest speakers about their first jobs, including President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa packed shelves, Hill-Lewis painted houses 

“My first job, I had a moment when I was a student, I was a packer at L Suzman, which was a distribution company,” said Ramaphosa, who was the keynote speaker on Day 1. “And after that I went to work for a union.”

When asked if he was paid well, he laughed: “Oh no, please. Very little.”

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis spent his school holidays in the mid-2000s painting homes.

“My first job was painting houses in Edgemead, where I lived during school vacation, to earn money. I was getting R80 a day. In those days, it wasn’t bad. It was good, hard work and kept us busy during school holidays.”

Our host of the On the Record Summit, Devi Govender, who has been an investigative journalist for three decades, started out with her first paycheque with her first love.

“I worked at my university’s library. I worked on a Tuesday and a Thursday, and in a whole month I would earn R300 – for the whole month! I have a love for books, so I didn’t even feel that they needed to pay me.”

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube remembers her uni days in Makhanda very well.

“My first job was a waitressing job while I was a student at Rhodes University. We were essentially paid in tips. It helped augment the res food and cater for snacks!”

Former finance Minister Trevor Manuel said he used to be a shelf packer at Pick n Pay over five decades ago.

“I earned the princely sum of 24 cents an hour, and I did it after school. That was just over 50 years ago. It was child labour!” he laughs.

And Media24’s CEO, Raj Lalbahadur, said his first job was as an invoice clerk, which only lasted for six months because he then became a fuel tanker driver at the same company.

“I was very taken by the trucks and what they did. I used to strip gearbox engines and put them back together. But I drove tankers for about two years.”

NPA skills crisis costing the economy

Day 2 also saw some weighty topics covered as well. Two of the biggest panels of the day were “To BEE or not to BEE?” and “The Heavy Cost of Crime”.

The crime panel included new NPA boss, advocate Andy Mothibi, and criminology professor Irvin Kinnes.

Speaking on the sidelines, Hermione Cronje, former head of the NPA’s Investigating Directorate, gave her thoughts on what she heard.

“I wish I had heard some more details about how we’re going to address a catastrophic skills crisis in the NPA. I don’t hear how we’re going to go from prosecutors who are corrupt to take on organised crime figures overnight.”

Were she to have the magic wand, she would focus primarily on upskilling our nation’s prosecutors.

“You can prioritise until the cows come home, but if you don’t have the people, you’re just talking into the air. So, I would start with the skilling process. I know the red tape is there, but we do need an extraordinary intervention.”

Mbekezeli Benjamin, legal researcher at Judges Matter, a civil society watchdog of South Africa’s judiciary, based at UCT, echoed those sentiments.

“We need to invest heavily to get proper skills into the system, not just prosecutors but court administrators, because they are the cogs in the machine. We have a lot of cases backed up in the pipeline.”

A public BEE review?

The morning’s session also covered the weighty topic of BEE. One of the talking points from panellist Ann Bernstein called for a serious, public process to review the efficacy of the policy on South Africa’s transformation and business goals.

Speaking from the sidelines, Tony Ehrenreich, representing Cosatu in the Western Cape, said that BEE should have a stronger focus on helping smaller businesses and people in townships.

“BEE has clearly been abused in South Africa,” Ehrenreich said. “The same political crooks have enriched themselves. You have opposition from white capital to BEE, and you have opposition from black capital, who do not want to broaden the net.

“We must ensure that the principle of BEE is transferred to the Transformation Fund, and that must broaden our opportunities to townships, to smaller businesses and to black people generally, not just the previously empowered.”

Speaking to Graeme Raubeheimer on The Lead, political analyst Mpumelelo Mkhabela said BEE should stop black economic disempowerment.

“If you get a contract in government to build a school, that contract should be properly monitored, and the outcome must be a good-quality school. If it is, the empowerment goes wider to the village, to the township, to the community.

“What we have seen in the last few years is disempowerment, in the sense that people get this contract and don’t finish the schools, or the school is finished, but it falls apart in a few years, or it costs an arm and a leg.

“And one way to get rid of it is to make sure that political connections are criminalised.”

Listen to The Lead with Graeme Raubenheimer.

To follow more reactions and news from News24’s On the Record Summit, click here.