Although many of the proposals were bland and specifically engineered to avoid any controversy prior to an election there were many comments, which were labour friendly.  In particular, the extension of the unemployment benefits from 238 days to 365 days is going to come as an enormous relief to many of those that are unemployed.  Despite the government quoted percentage of 24%, unemployment there is a strongly held belief that it is closer to 30%.

The youth employment strategy, which is being implemented, comes as a great relief and many of us urge the Labour Minister to put pressure on our government to extend the Youth Employment Tax Incentive.  There have already been some successes and Minister Gordhan has said that the first month had 56,000 beneficiaries of this incentive.