Youth Day plea: Young graduate stands at robots as SA unemployment deepens.
On Youth Day, while many marked the occasion by reflecting on opportunity and progress, 25-year-old qualified town planner Lungelo Ndaba stood at a set of traffic lights in Cape Town, holding onto hope that a passing motorist might offer what years of study have not yet secured: a job.
Unemployed but qualified, Ndaba, a town planning graduate of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), has joined a growing number of young graduates turning to unconventional and public-facing methods to break into an increasingly challenging job market.
His decision to stand at traffic lights was not spontaneous but born out of mounting desperation and what he describes as "hunger" — both literal and figurative.
Originally from Pongola, a small town in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Ndaba said he is the first graduate in his family, a milestone that has brought both pride and pressure.
