Idle Time and Its Repercussions on Youth in South Africa: A Recipe of Unemployment Crisis

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the repercussions of idle time on youthful population through critically analyzing the status quo of youth unemployment in South Africa. Youth unemployment has become a major source of concern in South Africa and around the world. The unemployment challenge has thus left many young people in limbo, a state of misery, idleness, and social death. It subsequently exposed many young South African to socially immoral activities such as, inter alia, drug and alcohol use, deceit and theft. Idle time, the period people wastefully spend doing nothing productive, vehemently led many young people to perish, and ostensibly resulted into the economic stagnation in South Africa. This paper fastened its philosophical argument on the biblical aphorism that “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper adopted a qualitative desktop-based research methodology as well as document analysis as data analysis tool. Findings: The results established that the persistent challenge of youth unemployment has pushed South Africa’s economic development into a downward spiral toward underdevelopment and vulnerability. Therefore, the country lacks a holistic approach to address idleness and unemployment, to unlock the potential of its youthful population, stimulate economic growth and development. Implications/Originality/Value: It is therefore concluded that youth unemployment has become a serious dilemma in South Africa, that it subjected majority of young people to idleness and encourages them to engage in immoral activities such as crime, making them more susceptible to the onset of drug and alcohol use. The paper recommended that the government should adopt effective mechanisms to engage unemployed youth into the economic mainstream, to enhance development and reduce idle time tragedies.