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Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Unlike his contemporaries who based their research on maladjusted
members of society, the American psychologist Abraham Maslow turned to
a study of leaders and exemplary people in a bid to understand the
stages of human development. He found that human beings have a
hierarchy of needs, and if physiological needs go unmet, the need for
a sense of belonging or a sense of achievement become inconsequential.

This is a self-evident truth when one looks at the needs of the
majority of our people in South Africa. For those who don't know where
their next meal will come from, a discussion around prejudice or
creativity is meaningless. According to Maslow, even morality, problem
solving and acceptance of facts do not enter the equation until the
needs for food, water, health and employment are met.

That is why the priorities of Government often seem misplaced and
leaders fail to speak at the level of the people. In South Africa,
some 4,3 million people are unemployed. Their focus is not on nation
building or a programme of moral regeneration. Their concern is how
they will pay the bills, get medical attention for their children and
rise out of the inevitable debt trap.

I was born in an impoverished region of KwaZulu and I still have my
home in Mahlabathini. We suffer frequent power failures and, for
several years, Telkom has not seen the value in replacing stolen
cables that would enable me to have a home telephone line.
Nevertheless, I have not traded my life among the people I serve for a
luxury home in the suburbs.

I feel that leaders often lose touch with their people when they rise
to power, because comfort breeds complacency. One thinks about the
National Youth Development Agency, which celebrates one year of
existence this month. The Agency is tasked with overseeing training
for young South Africans. But the millions of Rands allocated to it
have gone into Business Class flights for the executive and a trip to
Turkey with the President.

The recently released Quarterly Labour Force Survey by Statistics
South Africa shows that we shed 171 000 jobs in the first quarter of
2010. If one were to try and imagine how many unemployed people that
constitutes, picture the whole of Johannesburg being without work, and
add another million on top of that.

Stats SA has a third indicator beyond employed and unemployed, which
is the category of ?discouraged?. These are the people who have given
up hope of finding employment and are caught within the cycle of
poverty. Many of these are young people, unskilled and ill-equipped to
enter the work force.

To these, the promises of Government ring hollow, like President
Zuma's announcement of youth employment initiatives and Finance
Minister Pravin Gordhan's offer of subsidies for companies that employ
young people. We are now mid-way through the year and nothing has come
of these good intentions. It is unlikely that much will happen over
the next six weeks as we all but shut down for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

I have warned in the National Assembly that we are raising a
generation that will remain unemployed because we are failing to
impart skills that they can use. I recall the many graduation
ceremonies of the Emandleni-Matleng Training Centre which I officiated
over, in which I emphasized the IFP's vision of self-help and
self-reliance.

Emandleni-Matleng equipped young people with life skills, empowering
them with competence in practical fields like agriculture, animal
husbandry and carpentry. This was part of the IFP's drive to see
individuals equipped to rise above their circumstances, and take
others with them.

During my years as the Chief Minister of KwaZulu, I focused on
development programmes that emphasized the value of lifelong learning.
I still believe that education if the key to our people's full
liberation from poverty and its accompanying social evils such as
disease, injustice and despair.

But we need to be strategic in the kind of education we offer,
acknowledging that a system that prepares young learners to be
tolerant team-players is less important than one which equips them to
be contributing members of society. The satisfaction of doing a job
well is something that many of our young people are barred from
experiencing.

Like Abraham Maslow, our Government needs to study the good examples
that abound. There is no use dwelling on the negative, as some are
prone to do. Pointing out the failures in the system is only useful
when it brings us to the point where we begin looking for a better way
of doing things.

This being Youth Month, we are given pause to consider the specific
needs of our youth in terms of their health and well-being. As another
psychologist, Dr Sigmund Freud, pointed out, love and work are two
essential elements to the health of any human being. If we want to
raise the standard of living for our youth, we need to find ways of
addressing the ever-increasing unemployment among them.

I was interested to hear my former Deputy Minister's suggestions on
reintroducing military training for our youth. The Hon. Ms Lindiwe
Sisulu has a point. Unlike conscription, voluntary military training
could impart not only skills, but a sense of work ethic,
responsibility and belonging, which are essential characteristics of
contributing citizens.

Emandleni-Matleng was run along military lines, emphasizing
discipline, respect and order. I may be faulted for being old-school
when it comes to valuing discipline. But when we open the newspapers
and watch the news, and see images of rioting crowds, taxis burning
and toilets being ripped up, every citizen of goodwill longs for a
champion to bring order back to South Africa.

For years the IFP has been that champion. Our fight becomes more
difficult by the day, but we keep fight regardless, because the cause
of serving the people of South Africa is always worth the effort.

Yours in the service of the nation,