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A large portrait of a bright-eyed young woman, dressed in a graduation black dress, hovers over a tiled and unblemished living room of Protea Glen, a suburb of Soweto Township, in the suburbs of Johannesburg.
This is a constant reminder and is eating away at the potential that has not been exploited for 10 years.
"It's like you're going to school, you go to school … and once you're qualified, you sit down with a stack of certificates that you can not use." , "said Kgomotso Sebabi, 36.
Armed with qualifications in wealth management, she emigrated in 2008 from the small central city of Kimberley to the financial hub of South Africa, Johannesburg, in search of opportunities.
To date, the holder of two bachelor's degrees has failed to find a job in her field.
Since then she has acquired three other postgraduate certificates in order to increase her chances, but all she has managed to get is a part time job in a call center.
"Initially, I wanted to see myself evolve in the financial sector, maybe become director … general manager of finance or something like that, but it did not go as planned," he said. she told AFP.
A quarter century of democracy, South Africa has an official unemployment rate of 27.1%.
This rate is about 53% among people under 35 – among the highest in the world.
The causes of unemployment in South Africa are numerous and complex, the most important factor being a slow-growing economy that has failed to create jobs at the rate at which new graduates enter the market.
The government has sworn several times, particularly during the election campaign, to create desperately needed jobs.
According to Chief Labor Statistician Malerato Mosiane, unemployment remained stubbornly high, even as the population grew rapidly.
Tswelopele Maputla, a graduate in media, completed her journalism studies in November 2018 at Rhodes University, but was not near a newsroom. She sends nominations whenever she can.
"This has been incredibly difficult and demotivating," said Maputla as she was finishing cleaning her mother's home in the suburbs of Daveyton, east of Johannesburg.
"I have the skills and it's disheartening to be able to get that break I need to prove myself."
Votes for jobs
As South Africa goes to the polls on May 8, the promise of jobs has become a bait for elections again.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised that his African National Congress (ANC) would create "many more" jobs. The party in power for 25 years and will win again the majority vote in all polls.
"We will be able to create up to 275,000 additional jobs every year," Ramaphosa said at the launch of the ANC's election manifesto in January.
Kgomotso Sebabi, unemployed South African graduate, shows her certificate of higher education. By GIANLUIGI GUERCIA (AFP)
Mmusi Maimane, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, recently told supporters in Johannesburg: "I dream of finding a job in every home."
And Julius Malema, the leader of the far-left struggles Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has warned that South Africa "can not postpone the issue of employment".
But the promises are against a dull economy.
In April, the International Monetary Fund lowered the projected growth rate of South Africa's GDP for 2019 from 1.4% to 1.2%, due to political uncertainty that, along with high levels of corruption and recurrent power outages, has tarnished investor confidence.
The mbadive unemployment rate is seen as fueling the apathy of many young voters.
The electoral commission registered a 47 per cent drop in registered voters between the ages of 18 and 19. About two-thirds of the nine million eligible voters who have not bothered to register are under 30 years old.
"I will not vote," said Xhanti Ndondela, a 26-year-old unemployed agriculture graduate who qualified in 2016. "Why should I vote for a government I will never work for?"
"Tipping point"
At the dawn of democracy, access to higher education has improved: the number of graduates from public universities has more than doubled, from 92 874 in 2000 to 203 076 in 2016.
But there are simply not enough jobs.
The government's goal is to reduce unemployment by half, to about 14% by 2020, but it's "unlikely to happen," says the World Bank in a 2018 report.
"Globally, since 1994, a growing economy has created many jobs in South Africa, but not enough to significantly reduce unemployment," the bank said.
Pali Lehohla, a former general statistician and now a consultant to the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, warned of a crisis that is perpetuated on its own.
"We are caught in this process where unemployment, low education and poverty itself are mutually reinforcing, and there will definitely be a turning point," he told eNCA.
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