Date: 17/03/2006
Source: The Presidency
Title: Mlambo-Ngcuka: North West Legislature


  Address delivered by the Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the North West Legislature

The Premier of North West, Edna Molewa,
The Speaker of the North West Provincial Legislature,
Thandi Modise,
Members of the Executive Council,
Members of the Provincial Legislature,
Our honoured traditional leaders,
Leaders of faith based organisations,
Mayors and councillors,
Members of the business community,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Ba gaetsho dumelang!

I am deeply honoured by your invitation to address members of the North West Legislature and to get an opportunity to interact with members of this house. This is particularly so since our country has recently held its Local Government Elections and our people once more exercised their right to vote and in most cases renewed the democratic mandate to the ruling party.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate all the political parties that participated in the local government elections. Both the national and provincial government have the responsibility to give the maximum support to new councillors to ensure that they are able to discharge their responsibilities of ensuring efficient services delivery and a better life for our people at local level.

I would like to further take this opportunity to congratulate Presley Chweneyagae from Mafikeng in the North West a lead actor in Tsotsi, a South African made film for achieving yet another first for South Africa, by becoming the first South African film to win an Oscar under the category of Best Foreign Language Film. This film and its whole cast has made South Africa proud and are a true embodiment of the spirit of the ‘age of hope.’

The North West Province is predominantly rural and characterised by high levels of poverty and unemployment as well as low literacy levels. About 800 000 people are on social grants. Yet it is a province with many possibilities.

The efforts made in this province to create an attractive economic climate must be commended.

As you are aware, North West Province is a medium sized province relative to others in the country. With an annual production worth around R28 billion the economy of the North West is about twice the size of neighbouring Botswana and about the size of the Kenyan economy. The single most important industry in the North West is mining (contributing 42 percent to GGP), followed by agriculture with 13 percent and manufacturing 12 percent.

This province currently accounts for approximately 72 percent of the country’s total PGM sales and produces more PGMs than any other single area in the world. The challenge is to encourage more mineral beneficiation in all the minerals that occur in this province and for the benefits to accrue also to the people of the North West.

In addition from mining, agriculture is the only sector in which North West Province is acknowledged to have comparative advantage over any other provinces.

Tourism and manufacturing sectors are growing in importance in terms of their contribution to GGP growth and need to be given support.

The province is a classical case why we need not only to accelerate but also to entrench sharing of growth.

Government adopted the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) to co-ordinate and mobilise national efforts, meaning all South Africans towards growing the economy at an average rate of 4,5 percent between 2005 and 2009 and then an average rate of six percent between 2010 and 2014. AsgiSA forms part of South Africa’s response intervention to halving poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment by 2014 as part of its target of realising the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG), which are set for 2015.

United Nations Secretary-General Koffi Annan, in his recent address to the joint sitting of Parliament, highlighted that Africa is the only continent that is note expected to meet the UNMDG. In South Africa, we want to meet these goals by 2014 and I would urge that the North West Province should aim to achieve these goals even much earlier given that it is well endowed with resources, which we need to develop for the benefit of most people. The growth of North West must be shared not just accelerated. That is why we have adopted a programme to that effect.

Why AsgiSA?

The aim of AsgiSA is:

* To remove constraints to growth that is shared
* To achieve sustainable growth that is shared by most South Africans (mass impact)
* Linkages between first and Second Economy (systematic and programmatically)
* Identify new areas of growth, taking advantage of possibilities created in the last 11 years of stable ANC rule
* Unlock potential of women and youth in particular

AsgiSA interventions:

* Infrastructure programmes
* Sector investment strategies
* Education and skills
* Second Economy & small, medium and micro enterprise (SMME) interventions
* Macro-economic issues
* Public administration issues/delivery

Further allocations are envisaged going forward:

Generally 50 percent to be spent by the three spheres of government; 40 percent to be spent by State owned enterprises. Five percent to be spent through public private partnerships. Three – five percent to be spent by development finance institutions.

Provincial projects:

* Eastern Cape (EC) – Umzimvubu water catchment and timber industries
* Northern Cape (NC) – Beneficiation encompassing e.g. Diamond, gemstone and jewellery making and training
* Northern Cape (NC) - SKA
* Northern Cape - Kalahari goat kid
• KwaZulu Natal (KZN), Northern Cape (NC), Free State (FS), Eastern Cape (EC), Mpumalanga (Mpu), North West (NW) – National bio-fuels; sugar, soya, cassava, maize
* Limpopo – Dilokong Platinum Corridor - dam, road & railway linkage
* Gauteng – JIA Logistics hub / IDZ
* KZN – Makhathini Cassava & Sugar
* NW – Western Frontier Cattle Beneficiation
* WC – N2 gateway, housing, local economic development (LED) and infrastructure
* Mpu – Moloto Highway Road & Rail

Sector strategies (industrial strategies):

* Focus on sectors with potential for high growth, employment creation and enterprise development
* Immediate focus on BPO and Tourism (strategies are essentially complete)
* Focus on agriculture/agro-processing for next set of initiatives: biofuels, timber, food production and processing
* Other sectors include: chemicals; metals beneficiation (including capital goods); creative industries; clothing and textiles; durable consumer goods
* This will still benefit from evolving industrial strategy

Education and skills development:

• Interventions in quality of general education: quality education development and upliftment programme (QIDSUP); maths & science (Dinaledi schools); stronger career guidance programmes
* Strengthening of Further Education and Training (FET) system: R1.9 billion injection over next three years
* Much strengthened adult basic education and training (ABET) programme
* Next phase of national skills development strategy: better targeting on skills needs
* Joint initiative for priority skills acquisition

Second Economy interventions

* Expansion of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP): bigger rural road projects; focus on maintenance; roll out of early childhood development component
* Strengthening of start up and microfinance initiatives especially loans between R10 000 and R250 000 and those below R10 000
* Targeted initiatives for women and youths e.g. unemployed graduates
* All sector strategies must have developmental elements
* Regulatory environment for SMMEs
* Market access and product development
* Realisation of dead assets e.g. livestock, township houses, land etc

Second Economy focus areas:

* Coops a programme based in Independent Development Trust (IDT) is being developed
* Housing related problems missing stock and financing matters’ between R50 000 and R500 000
* Youth national service encompassing:
- Service,
- Skilling,
- Citizenship/patriotism

* Land reform and productive use of land
* Local economic development
*Governance and institutional issues especially local government delivery

Key for AsgiSA is:

* Universal access to basic services: water, sanitation and electricity.
* Human resource is crucial for strengthening capacity to deliver development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) is working on deployment of skills especially project managers to local authorities.
* A follow up to project consolidated and Imbizos.
* This initiative is linked to mentoring of young professionals by experienced technical experts; especially engineers.
* Encouraging nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), community based organisations (CBOs) and social entrepreneurship to promote participation and engage in social mobilisation
* General improved service delivery including spending capacity and improve on local economic development (LED).

Honourable members and madam speaker this is doable. We need the will and vigilance. We need to cooperate with all tiers of government; with private sector and Department of Labour.

In the context of the programme we have elaborated, it is vital that the provincial legislature plays its crucial oversight role in ensuring a successful implementation of this programme and to assist implementation. This is the ‘age of hope’ but we must make hope for poor people. So much is in place.

It is also important that the legislatures play a key role in assisting the new councils to function efficiently and improve on the delivery of basic services to our people.

It is the duty of members of parliament to ensure that the public is kept informed about what government is doing and aware how government programmes can assist them. Let us build a people’s parliament that will be an instrument in building a better life for the people of this province. We must go out and tell; go out and serve.

As you are aware the country is facing a challenge in the power generating sector but as the Minister of Public Enterprise indicated, we do not have a crisis of power shortage but a challenge in reduced reserve capacity.

I wish to urge members of this house and all South Africans to join the campaign for more efficient use of our energy sources.

By each of us doing our bit in energy efficiency, we can make a significant contribution.

Madam Speaker, we firmly believe that we have built a basis for a National Programme of Shared Economic Growth (NPSEG).

With this programme, we can achieve our social objectives and we can more than meet the millennium goals.

Our second decade of freedom will be the decade in which we radically reduce in equality and virtually eliminate extreme poverty.

We know now that we can do it, working together around an initiative which has a support of the nation.

Today is better that yesterday, tomorrow will be better than tomorrow.

I thank you.

Issued by: The Presidency
17 March 2006