By Thabelo Raphala CA(SA), MBA, Cert.Dir. (IoDSA) – Founder and CEO, Eliora Research and Training Institute & Eliora Next Generation Entrepreneurs
When the water stopped running at my mother’s house, we thought we had a plumbing problem. We did not. We had a professionalism problem.
Thabelo Raphala CA(SA), MBA, Cert.Dir. (IoDSA) – Founder and CEO, Eliora Research and Training Institute & Eliora Next Generation Entrepreneurs.
Supplied by Thabelo Raphala
The person we had hired could not produce a Certificate of Compliance and, as it turned out, was not a registered plumber at all. We had to let him go, bring in someone properly qualified, and pay twice for the same job because the first job had never really been done properly.
Many South Africans have a version of this story – a leaking pipe that was never fixed properly, a bathroom installation that had to be redone, money paid to someone who disappeared when the problem came back. Poor workmanship has become so common that many households and businesses almost expect to be disappointed.
But this is not only a story about bad plumbing. It is a story about opportunity.
South Africa has millions of young people looking for work, while at the same time communities, households, schools, businesses, municipalities and construction sites urgently need skilled, reliable and professional artisans. Statistics South Africa’s first quarter 2026 Labour Force Survey still reflects that of the 42.2 million individuals in the working-age population, 21 million (49.7%) were aged 15–34 years. 5.6 million young people aged 15–34 were employed, while 4.7 million were unemployed and the remaining 10.6 million were outside the labour force. The national unemployment rate stood at 32.7% with those aged 15–24 facing the highest unemployment rate at 60.9%, followed by those aged 25–34 at 40.6%.
That gap should worry us, but it should also wake us up.
A trade the machines can’t take
So when young people ask me where to put their energy in a labour market this brutal, plumbing is one answer I give without hesitation – and increasingly, so does the AI industry itself. A generative model can write a memo in seconds but it cannot diagnose a corroded joint, or crawl into a crawlspace to find a gas leak. Digital tools – quoting, prefabrication, remote monitoring – are entering the trade, but they’re augmenting the plumber, not replacing them. The plumbers who pair trade mastery with basic digital fluency will pull furthest ahead.
Research, industry insight and the opportunity for young plumbers
The opportunity for young people entering plumbing cannot be understood only by looking at unemployment numbers or the shortage of qualified artisans. It must also be understood through the changing needs of the country: how households are using water, how infrastructure is ageing, how settlements are expanding, how compliance expectations are increasing, and how technology is changing the way tradespeople work.
This is why research matters in skills development. Without data, sector engagement and continuous analysis, it becomes difficult to identify where the real opportunities are, which skills are becoming more valuable, and what kind of plumber the market actually needs.
A young person entering the plumbing profession today is not entering the same industry that existed ten or twenty years ago. They are entering a profession shaped by water security, migration patterns, changing consumer behaviour, municipal infrastructure pressure, housing demand, construction standards and rising expectations around compliance and professionalism.
According to National Treasury’s 2026 Budget, public infrastructure spend will exceed R1-trillion over the medium term. President Ramaphosa’s National Water Action Plan, launched in July 2026, is already putting R12.3-billion behind bulk-water projects and water services across all provinces. Mining and energy tell the same story, with boilermakers, millwrights and riggers in equally short supply. This isn’t a short hiring spike – it’s a multi-decade demand curve, and it needs both employed tradespeople and contracting businesses that will deliver this work on the ground, an opportunity available for plumbers to take up, and the question is, are we equipping the young people to be fit for the demand?
I recently attended the Plumbing Indaba Conference hosted by the PIRB on 22–23 July 2026 and the discussions highlighted the very same issues of a country with significant infrastructure needs, a large informal plumbing market, growing consumer demand for reliable workmanship, and increasing pressure to professionalise the trade. These insights are important because they help us interrogate whether training programmes are still relevant, whether young people are being prepared for the real problems they will face, and whether the sector is producing plumbers who can solve practical problems in homes, businesses, municipalities and construction environments.
Why professionalism is the whole game
I’ve spent my career closing exactly this kind of gap. Across the ecosystem of work I’ve led, supporting more than 12 000 businesses – just over 5 000 of them through dedicated Enterprise and Supplier Development programmes – who collectively generated over a billion in combined revenue. That work taught me one thing above all: skill alone rarely creates opportunity – professionalism, systems and processes, compliance, adequate financial health, professional registration and market access do.
This is exactly why professionalism can’t be treated as paperwork. PIRB and IOPSA exist because a homeowner – like my family – has no way to tell a properly registered plumber from someone who simply owns a bakkie and a toolbox. Registration, insurance, the right to issue a Certificate of Compliance – these aren’t hurdles, they’re what let a plumber charge what the work is worth and get hired again.
Building the ladder
A model built on listening to both sides of the equation.
On one side, industry needs fit-for-purpose tradespeople who can work safely, comply with standards, deliver quality workmanship and support critical infrastructure projects.
On the other side, young people need clear pathways into employment, income generation and business ownership. Many do not lack ambition. They lack structured access, credible training, industry exposure, registration pathways, business skills and market opportunities.
As a QCTO accredited institution to train plumbers, our model is not to train plumbers in isolation – it is to build a single, structured pipeline of professional tradespeople across South Africa’s critical industry needs: plumbers alongside boilermakers, millwrights, electricians, riggers, bricklayers and carpenters.
But a trade qualification on its own doesn’t build a sustainable career or a sustainable business, so we go further. We infuse entrepreneurship into the programmes, when the plumber graduates, they do not leave with a plumbing certificate only, they leave being a capable entrepreneur who has a contract-ready business capable of bidding on the infrastructure and supplier opportunities this investment cycle is creating.
None of this replaces PIRB or IOPSA, or the equivalent professional bodies for the other trades – it feeds into them. Our role is to get people to the point where formal registration is within reach, and then to keep supporting them as they build a business around that trade, not just a job.
If you’re a young South African wondering where to put your energy: plumbing and the trades around it sit at the centre of a multi-trillion-rand infrastructure programme that’s just getting started, doing work no machine can take from you.
I think about the plumber who redid the work at my mother’s house every time I talk about this – he didn’t get there by luck, he got there because someone gave him a real pathway to stand on.
If you’re already skilled but working informally, formal registration is the single best move you can make this year. And if you’re already a registered professional, the next generation is watching how we treat newcomers – whether the standard feels like a gate, or a ladder. I’d rather we built the ladder.
