Mazwai is seduced by Blade's blunt statistics

Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande told a breakfast meeting that 55% of blacks who graduated from Stellenbosch University were unlikely to get a job in the first year after graduation, while the figure for whites is 12%. For Wits University, 29% of its black graduates had a slim chance of getting a job a year after leaving university, while the figure for white graduates was 7%.

These figures provide just a glimmer of the reality that racism has simply gone underground.

via www.bdlive.co.za

Strange that a person like Thami Mazwai, who I have the highest respect for, would be blinded by the missing logic in Blunt Nzimande's statement.  It's likely that the statistics themselves hide the reality.  But if I'm wrong at least I offered a little clarity.

We'll go back to the Economically Active Population - the latest statistics can be found off StatSA.  The statistics are too difficult to read through but I'll give a round about estimate of what they are per race group.

African - 85%

White - 5%

Coloured - 5%

Indian - 5%

Let's say that the EAP mirrors the graduates at all universities in South Africa (Mazwai is remiss by not mentioning something as concrete as this), if there are 100 graduates then 85 would be African, 5 white etc.  This means that at Stellenbosch 38 and a quarter black graduates are likely to get jobs, 4.4 whites on the other hand will get jobs.  I'd say the Africans are winning hands down here.  You can follow the same logic for Wits.

I don't see any racism here at all (other than from Blunt) - all I see is another politician who has found he has to become race obsessed because the alliance he represents has to blame its failures on something.  Shades of Hitler.

 

Comments

[Richard Ferrer]

I'd be interested to see unemployment by faculty; I suspect that South African universities need to be expanding places in some faculties and reducing in others; there's a massive shortage of graduate engineers for example. There are no simple answers however.

[Henry Nelson]

Amazing that you criticize Nzimande and Mazwai for lack of logic and grasp of statistics when you yourself show exactly that. What matters is of course the probability of being employed for an individual in the specific group, not the overall absolute number of employed in the same group.

With the logic you are using you would find it fair if overall unemployment in South Africa was 0% among and 95% among blacks. Hence in a representative group of 100, 5 whites and 5 blacks would be employed. (while 95 blacks and 0 white would be unemployed) Even a child should be able to see the flaws in this logic.

Furthermore, your assertion that the South African student population is representative of the overall composition of the South African population is of course not true, all evidence shows that certain groups such are whites are over-represented, this is particularly so at Stellenbosch university..

[Henry Nelson]

"0% among whites" I tried to say in my previous comment, excuse the error

[Paul Janisch]

A very valid point. In fact Richard Ferrer's observation that we don't know what the qualifications are of these individuals that don't get jobs. But I think that Mazwai's argument is completely lacking in logic because he himself doesn't have the full picture. What I find most alarming is that Blunt throws out these statistics in an attempt to drive home some race-based conclusion - this is not what you'd expect from a minister. But then again this is South Africa and competence is not a requirement for political positions.