VIEWPOINT | BY MALUSI GIGABA We need to invest aggressively in new plant, technologies and skills The current global economic crisis has forced policy makers to rethink our macroeconomic management approaches. The South African economy is facing the classic structural challenge of a middle-income economy and if it is to grow and develop, we need to invest aggressively in new plant, technologies and skills. As a response to the structural constraints in our economy and global economic externalities, we identified infrastructure as both a driver and an enabler for economic development. Our infrastructure development programme is specifically designed both to expand our mineral exports and build our capacity and capability to design and manufacture intermediate and complex trade-able goods, for internal use and for exports. Accordingly, we have made significant strides in embedding the Competitive Supplier Development Programme and philosophy into the very procurement fabric of State-Owned Companies (SOC). In this regard, the 75% local procurement target has become more probable and realistic! Furthermore, we have integrated economic transformation processes into every aspect of our investment programme. In the context of the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission, we have a long-term infrastructure plan that is carefully integrated and coordinated into 18 strategic integrated projects at an estimated costs of R877bn that are currently in construction and more than 177 000 construction jobs are tracked on these projects. Enablers such as skills, transformation and industrialisation underpin this plan. Under the leadership of President Jacob Zuma, the State Owned Companies have tremendously increased their capital investments, thus creating new jobs, developing new skills and contributing towards the countrys industrialisation agenda. His administration has spent more than R1 trillion over the past five years on infrastructure. Our country is indeed a country at work and a much better place to live. Each day we witness the improvement of the quality of life of the citizens of our country when we connect households with electricity to the grid; install solar water heaters; build new houses; improve integrated bus routes in our cities; improved road and rail transport; open new factories to support jobs and develop new artisanal skills at our training centres to support the build of our state-owned companies. And yet whilst we are focusing on the infrastructure build and industrialisation we appreciate the impatience and frustration felt by those who still do not have access to decent basic services. The President has committed us relentlessly to addressing all backlogs to ensure that every person in our country has access to water, electricity and sanitation and that by 2020, every household will have access to broadband. He addressed in brutal detail, and much to the chagrin of the opposition, the exceptional strides made by our country led by the African National Congress (ANC) during the past twenty years as we strove decisively to end the tragedy of apartheid-colonialism through programmes of social and They wished that the President either did not acknowledge these achievements or that you had no facts to back your account with. They wished that this impeccable delivery record did not exist so that they would be able gleefully to substantiate their narrative of failure, which hopelessly disintegrates in the face of all the detailed record acknowledged even by independent monitors. Instead, their own flagship project in the Western Cape cannot be backed up by reality and the lived experiences of black South Africans who live in this province. The website, Africa Check, recently published a report in which it said the Democratic Alliance (DA) has made false claims about service delivery on Twitter which it cannot back up with data, or quotes it from unknown sources. They suck them up from the thumb. The recent ill-fated march to Beyers Naude, or was it to Luthuli House, was not only opportunistic but was a deviation from the real and serious issues before the nation. First and foremost, the ANCs jobs plan is premised on the NDP and the NGP which direct us to create an additional 11 million sustainable, decent and quality jobs by 2030, including the public works programmes. The 6 million work opportunities arise in the ANC manifesto as part a broader jobs plan based on 7 pillars; namely: Infrastructure investment to unlock economic opportunities, industrialise the economy and create jobs; Increase investment in the key growth sectors by improving and better aligning existing manufacturing in incentive schemes; Boost local production by buying local goods, with the state buying 75% of its goods and services from local producers; Provide more work an training opportunities for the youth, setting aside nearly two-thirds of new infrastructure jobs for the youth; Encourage businesses to hire more youth through the youth employment tax incentive; Expand and improve education and training by creating and strengthening the university and FET sectors as well as the SOE artisanal training academies; and Massively expand the public works programme by creating 6m work opportunities, setting aside about 60% for the youth The state and private sector must collaborate in a national effort to create jobs. We believe in an active role for the state in the economy, unlike our more neo-liberal opponents who are unreformed market fundamentalists even in light of the global economic crisis and its lessons for developing as well as developed countries. It is simplistic, opportunistic and misleading to claim there can be a single set of programmes that can create decent jobs at once, especially when you either have no plan or have one hatched quickly out of expediency in order to try deceive a nation that keeps on asking the nagging question, what is your plan! Ownership patterns in our country still reflect racial and gender patterns of colonialism, and the structure of our economy remains backward and inhibiting to job creation - this is what the DA does not want to challenge and would rather die in the trenches to defend. Radical economic transformation is the most critical question the next five years must answer. Instead of marching to oppose the ANCs plans, they should place their own plans before the electorate and let the people decided - May 7 is the deadline! What was funny though was that whilst most of you never dared to march against our oppression, you are today most vocal about all that is going wrong in our country! The choices before the people of South Africa today have never been more sharp, stark and grave. As we usher in the second decade of our freedom, the fundamental question before our people is, what type of future do we want and how do we want to get to that Indeed, this is no time for our country to turn backward; now is the time to move South Africa forward, together, as a people! In 1994, we created the possibility for our country to make head ways towards this future we envisioned in the struggle. Today, as a result of the massive progress we have made, we have reason not only to celebrate what we have achieved, but as a result of this, to be more positive about the future, confident that we will bequeath our children an even better society that is more equal and just, with a thriving and sustainable economy and quality basic services. The ANC is modest and honest enough still to admit it that still more must be done to carry forward the change. The ANC is an interminable reservoir of hope and national pride. Of course, the ANC never promised our people short cuts and easy resorts to total emancipation. It never said the journey to be traversed in the struggle would be short, easy and laden with gold, milk, honey and all sorts of goodies. We have been true and honest to our people about the challenges ahead, the sacrifices required and the difficult choices to be made! Yet, we have stayed faithful to this truth, refusing to be detracted by populist and expedient temptations, and we have remained loyal to our course! In the process, as we dirtied our hands in the course of the struggle, and precisely because we are human, we have committed many mistakes. Nobody involved in the trenches of social change can emerge out of that process clean and without fault. The DA thinks politics is an issue of personalities and not substantive issues. Its about peoples lives. We know all they are opposed to, all they regard is wrong with South Africa, but we still do not know how they would fix it, how theyd make it right! We know all they are against, everything they whine and whinge about, but we have no clue what they are for! Let me join you in quoting Sir Winston Churchill when he said: You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks. If I may add, if you stop and bark back at every dog that barks at your unstoppable progress. He further added; Any idiot can see something wrong. But, can you see what is right? The DAs Tim Harris argues we are underperforming our peers. But, he neglect to mention that many of our peers whose growth outperforms ours are coming off a low base. For example, South Sudan and Afghanistan are growing higher than our own. Zimbabwe grew by 10.6% in 2011 and 4.4% in 2012. Does this mean the Zimbabwean economy is outperforming ours? He also did not mention that the Brazilian economy grew below ours at 0.9% last year after the end of the commodity super cycle. Turkey, which he cited as outperforming our economy, grew by 2.2% in 2013, down from 8.5% in 2011. Ultimately, these fluctuations depend on the economys reliance on primary products and external shocks; whereas, it is only industrialised economies that are more consistent and this is precisely where we want our economy to go. What we have heard during the debate on the State of Nation Address is the very sharp and blatant contractions between the message of abiding hope as articulated by the Presidents State of the Nation Address, and the message of doom and gloom articulated by the vestiges of the past. The DA is incapable of shaking off the past and firmly believes, twenty years post-apartheid, that the best way into the future is by turning backward. This is why, they reject black economic empowerment, and rather came up with a policy charade that will leave the current racial and gender economic ownership patterns unchanged; they reject employment equity, and rather have ensured in their model province that most top management positions in government remain in the control of those constituting only 17.5% of the population of this province; they reject prefer one in which workers have no rights to organise themselves into unions or fight for a living wage, and yet claim to seek decent jobs - just ask the farm workers of Du Noon if the DA really supports decent work!; they reject the National Health Insurance, and rather prefer the status quo in terms of which only about 25%South Africans have access to medical aids and hence access to quality healthcare is limited; they reject the notion of a developmental state that plays an active role in the economy, and they reject the radical land reform policies of this ANC-led government which will end the landlessness and destitution of the majority! The DA made extravagant claims regarding their role in job creation in the Western Cape. First, we are very pleased as government that we had excellent job growth in 2013 for the year as a whole in all nine provinces. Every job, whether in Limpopo, or North West, or Western Cape, must be celebrated. As the President said, the economy created 653 000 new jobs and we celebrate this. In the last three months 2013, we saw an increase of jobs in the Western Cape after a period when it battled with job creation. However, the funny thing is that when jobs are lost in the Western Cape, the ANC is blamed, but when there is jobs growth, then the DA like in the Chicken Little story, is first to claim credit. What do the facts show? Jobs grew in manufacturing in the Western Cape. I can point to the opening by Minister Patel of the Hisense factory and by Minister Davies of the Telumet factory as examples of national interventions to support job creation in Atlantis last year. I can point to the billions of rands of support offered to various sectors by national departments. I am just struggling to see what support the DA is giving. Jobs grew in the retail and financial sectors in the Western Cape. Now even the DA spin doctors will find it hard to point to what the provincial government does that can account for this expansion of retail and finance. Jobs grew in the employment of domestic workers in the Western Cape. Okay, perhaps the madams were taking on more workers, but hardly as a result of DA policies. Incidentally, the DA regards these jobs as real jobs, while those who work on expanded public works programmes are seen somehow not to have real jobs. Jobs actually shrank by 8000 in government services in the Western Cape. Now Mr and Mrs spin doctors, that is actually something that the DA DOES have control over and is directly responsible for! But these are all numbers for just one quarter. If we actually take the past four and a half years, the picture shows that the top-performing province is Limpopo. When the country should be celebrating having achieved15.2 million jobs, the highest level of employment ever in our history, the Desperate Alternative seeks to bring the country down and claim for itself what it did not achieve. But there is one more matter: let us not play loose and fast with periods. What does the DAs record show over the four and a half years it has been in government in the Western Cape? Over the almost five years since April 2009, 61% of the new jobs created in the Western Cape have gone to whites, who constitute only 17.5% of the total provincial population. 31% of new jobs went to Coloureds, who make up 53% of the provincial population. Africans actually lost jobs but constitute 28.5% of the population of the province. Is this what the DA is boasting about? Shame on you, DA. The DA sells itself as the party of delivery. We did an analysis recently of spending by province up to the latest date for which figures are available. It showed that the top four provinces, measured by percentage of spend against budget, were KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape. Where did the Western Cape feature? It is on spot number 8. That is called second last. It only spent 65 percent of its half-yearly budget, or to put it only a province that was placed under national administration did worse. Yet the DA lectures us about delivery. It must clean up its act in the Western Cape or better still, step down and let the ANC run the province. We will be a government of all, not a government for a small group of people living in affluent areas. >> Malusi Gigaba is an ANC NEC member and Minister of Public Enterprises. This is an edited extract of his input during the debate on the State of the Nation Address VIEWPOINT| BY JACKSON MTHEMBU Helen Zille and perpetuation of White domination Despite her self-promotion maneuvers and claims of being a liberal do-gooder and an anti-corruption crusader, on the contrary Helen Zille has always been concerned with safeguarding white interests and has never shied away from showering praises on even the most corrupt of white apartheid government officials during our past era. The most telling was her panegyric on Dr. Nico Diedrichs, a fanatical member of the Broederbond who served as Minister of Economic Affairs from 1958 -1967, Minister of Mines from 1961 - 1964, Minister of Finance from 1967 - 1974, and finally in the largely ceremonial position of State President from 1974 - 1978. A Broederbonder since he was young, his position as State President was secured through Broederbond support. Incredibly, at the time of Diederichs death, Helen Zille spoke about him in admiring terms and claimed His economic brilliance brought him recognition from all over the world. She heaped praises on him around the same time that stories were surfacing about Diederichs involvement in property speculation, bribery and other corrupt activities. Diederichs estate was eventually declared bankrupt, as he owed money to everyone from meat suppliers to diamond companies. As one commentator puts it, this was a reflection of Diederichs profligacy and healthy appetite for credit and his connections to various influential-lobbying groups. Despite Zilles attempts to reinvent herself amidst wildly exaggerated claims of courage and trailblazing journalism, the record reveals that Zille was very much part of the apartheid sycophants who only saw brilliance in the architects of that system which was condemned by the entire world as a crime against humanity. Not surprisingly, Zille who harboured such subservient, flattering sentiments towards corrupt apartheid functionaries is now reinventing herself as an anti-corruption crusader whose targets are black people associated with the democratic government. On the one hand she denounces successful black businesspeople and does not think it is acceptable that hard-working black businessmen should, like their white counterparts, aspire to become billionaires. She advocates for an inherently racist capitalism in which scorn and ridicule are heaped upon black billionaires while maintaining a stony silence about her white supporters who are very rich due to apartheid social engineering. With her racially tinted lenses Zille can never conceive of any black person who surpasses the economic brilliance she saw in apartheid leader Diederichs. In fact, the DA uses the rhetoric about black billionaires as a smokescreen for its longstanding opposition to any laws or measures it sees as promoting a racial transformation or threatening white privilege. Another facet of Zille and DA anti-black strategy has been the highly personal and defamatory attacks on black civil servants while their white counterparts who blatantly serve DA interests are portrayed as saints. We saw a similar pattern emerging in the wholesale attacks on Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe and former National Director of Public Prosecution (NDPP) Menzi Simelane. Also, a few months ago, the DA-aligned individuals and entities launched scathing attacks in then acting NDPP Jiba for having the pluck to suggest that Glynis Breytenbach, a white prosecutor, should be subjected to disciplinary action. They maligned Jiba and Breytenbach fired the first salvo by claiming in her Labour Court application that Jiba suspended her in an attempt to protect former crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli. That tactic partially succeeded in portraying Breytenbach as a victim and shifting the focus away from her despicable conduct, corruption and conflict of interest in the Kumba/ICT matter. It has now been revealed that Breytenbach is a proud member of the DA and is on its prominent list of deployees to the national assembly. She was in all probability a dedicated DA deployee whose diligent service her organisation in the National Prosecution Authority has won her the accolades of promotion of being deployed to parliament. Zille has already lauded her for her legal brilliance and claimed her making DA deployment list to parliament was evidence of DAs commitment to the rule of law. What rule of law? Even more shocking, Breytenbach received funding from Nat Kirsch, the same tycoon who funded the botched DA-AGANG marriage while she was actively serving as a prosecutor. In fact evidence is piling up that Breytenbach may have committed acts of corruption while serving as a senior prosecutor. One can only hope that the NPA, the Hawks and SARS will assiduously and vigorously pursue this matter. Zilles choice of leaders of both De Lille and Ramphele as junior partners in the enterprise to defend white interests should not come as a surprise to anyone. White leaders of the DA cherish and nurture blacks they can dominate in all fronts, buy at fire sale prices or at least those self-hating blacks that regard approval from whites as their ticket to success. De Lille, a former firebrand leader of the Pan Africanist Congress forsaken the pan Africanist principles she once advocated and policies of the electoral party she created and joined the DA and now she is a pathetic and self-serving security guard for Coloureds votes in the Western Cape. In Zilles world, Dr Mamphela Ramphele was also destined to become another rent-a-black face. Zille counted on the fact that Ramphele has been a loyal servant of those whites who propagate lethal anti-black attacks. Ramphele provided affidavits in the matter involving Judge President Hlophe, Richard Mdluli and others but has assiduously avoided criticizing whites that are implicated in egregious acts of corruption and price collusions robbing the poor of their stable diet and inflating prices in the building of the stadiums and rolling out of infrastructure. Based on her views of blacks as corrupt and money-hungry, Zille assumed that greasing Rampheles palms and enticing her through Kirschs money would do the trick. The project fizzled out because it was based on egos and Zilles racial stereotypes about blacks and was never based on principles! Evidently, Zille and the DA have no commitment to eradicating racism and fighting corruption, which are the cornerstone of the DA foundation - white corruption and racism. >> Jackson Mthembu is an ANC NEC member and ANC National Spokesperson READERS FORUM Not the time to remove the ANC government This article is motivated by Professor Malegapuru Makgobas article entitled A democracy at the crossroads which appeared on page 30 of City Press of 19 January 2014. Professor Makgoba argued - and I absolutely agree - that since 1994 there has been significant qualitative and quantitative changes in most rural and urban areas in South Africa. These changes include - although not limited to - tarred roads, electricity, clean running water, health facilities such as clinics, schools and the extension of government grants which are received on time. I am pleased that at least some academics such as Prof. Makgoba have guts to admit that the ANC and its government has done a lot to change the lives of the people for the better and it has made South Africa a better country to live in than it has ever been, notwithstanding some challenges which most of which are structural. This article seeks to demystify two main points raised by the opposition parties against the ANC. Firstly, the opposition argues that the African National Congress (ANC) government has allowed the issue of corruption to reach unprecedented levels. Secondly, that the ANC government has failed to improve the lives of the South African people. Since 1994 the ANC government has been intensifying the fight against corruption both in the public and private sectors from initiating methods aimed at preventing public servants from doing business to holding public officials individually liable for losses arising from corruption. Additionally, it has also taken an unprecedented decision that any ANC member or ANC public representative found guilty before a court of law especially on charges of corruption to step down from any leadership positions in the ANC, government and society at large. Though some of the decisions are yet to be given practical meaning but it signals a serious commitment to fighting corruption. Moreover, the ANC government has put in place systems and programs which have exposed corrupt activities. However, the ANC admits that all of these are not enough hence it calls on both the private and the public sectors to desist from participating in corrupt activities such as bribing public servants etc. The claim that the ANC has failed to improve the lives of South Africans is fallacious to say the least. For instance, the ANC Government has done a lot to transform Bantu education to an inclusive education system resulting in the elevation of the senior certificate rate to above 70%. Arising from this and other government interventions, the number of graduates has doubled since the ANC government took over. Furthermore, it is also an undisputable fact that today more than 15 million people are able to go to bed with something on their stomachs because of the comprehensive anti-poverty programs aimed at intensifying social security networks thus contributing significantly towards addressing three scientific discoveries made by Karl Marx as observed by his friend (Frederick Engels) which is the issue of food, shelter in the light of the fact that it has built more than 3.1 million houses. Another fact which cannot be disputed as well is that the ANC Government remains committed to fighting against joblessness through different initiatives which includes - although not limited to - labour intensive public works programs of whose incentives can be used by beneficiaries to address the issue of clothing beyond food and shelter, amongst other things. It is misleading and myopic for the opposition parties to argue that the ANC government has never done anything to improve the lives of South Africans. I contend that no opposition would have managed to score any victories recorded by the ANC in its 102 years of existence. Let me conclude by agreeing with four key reasons as to why South African opposition parties will never defeat the ANC thus making the ANC government to be more relevant than ever before. Firstly, it is true that some of these opposition parties are direct offshoots or imitations of the broad ANC church in some form or the other. Secondly, each of these parties is led by a single domineering cult-like or disgruntled figure without whom there is no party. Thirdly, the leader is the party and the party leader is not ready to be led by any other member within the party or other opposition party leaders (the recent 5 days marriage of DA and Agang being a relevant recent example. Finally, some of the leaders have such chequered political history and record. All of these points mean one thing to the voter - this is neither the time to contemplate removing the ANC government nor to give it less support as Prof Makgoba correctly puts it. As a result, the ANC shall indeed rule South Africa into the unforeseeable future.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:50:40 +0000