“We are entering the post-work era; the world of work is shrinking. Human irrelevance is becoming a factor. Humans are not as needed in production as they were needed in the past. Because of this, inequality is coming and it’s going to increase,” said Marwala.

The 4IR, described as the second wave of internet, is basically increasing digital connection between people and people as well as people and things. It has been described by tech reporters as a “mesh of virtual, social and the physical world". Ramaphosa said that a lot of jobs as we know them will be lost and taken over by technology.

“… the world of work is shrinking. People and companies are now moving more and more towards saying, ‘I’d rather have a robot, I’d rather have a machine, I’d rather have a device to do this and that than to have people’,” he said.

The government, according to Ramaphosa, is ready to welcome this new technological wave with investments and helping people get the required skills.

“That is why in South Africa we are focusing more and more in skilling our people, ensuring that the outcomes of our education become better and better because it is the skilled people who will be able to get jobs a lot easier.”

He said 4IR would come with its own jobs as people would be needed to run and design robots and that the skills should be directed to that.

“The current people who’ve got skills need to be reskilled and people also need to be upskilled. So we now need to look at the skills revolution in a new way and make sure that our people do get skills and in many ways it will require a lot of investment, we will need to invest but we also need to look at the transition support for working people in their transition, so that there is just transition as people lose jobs, we must know that there will be a just transition," he said.