Budget2017: Unemployed graduates take to the streets

The graduates from Fort Hare University, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Walter Sisulu University and colleges around the Eastern Cape are fed up with the high rate of unemployed graduates. 

The campaign’s chairperson Siphamandla Khasag says: "Our main motive is to bring back the dignity of education. High school pupils are no longer motivated to go to University or college because they can see a high number of graduates who are unemployed."

She says graduates around the Eastern Cape are taking to the streets ahead of the budget speech to try and pressure government and the private sector to employ more graduates.

"We have people here who have achieved so much, honours, masters and even PHD’s and some of them have not been employed and are struggling to get support for their own businesses," Khasag says.

Khasag holds a bachelor of administration in public sector, has an honours degree in political studies and I completed a postgraduate certificate in Education.

She says she studied a range of degrees so that she has more opportunities open to her but this has not worked.

 "We want South Africa to know we are here, we exist, we have nothing to do, and we are bored at home it is not like we are lazy,” Khasag says.