Address of the Deputy President of South Africa, Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, on the occasion of the Budget Vote of the Presidency: National Assembly, Parliament, Cape Town

The President of the Republic, The Honourable Thabo Mbeki
Madam Speaker of the National Assembly
Madam Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly
Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Honourable Members,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Fellow South Africans,

I am honoured to have an opportunity to engage with you on the occasion of the Annual Debate of the Presidency Budget.

This Budget takes place during a special month. Our Youth month!

When we talk about the people of South Africa and Africa we are talking about a population that is essentially young.

In Africa close to 30% of people are below 35 years of age. In South Africa 41% of our population is below the age of 35 years. This presents our continent and country with an opportunity to shape the next generation, depending on what we do.

In the 2007 SONA, the President announced that we need to look into the matter of the wage subsidy, which is a facilitated entry into the labour market by first time entrants, the majority of whom would be youth. Precisely because we need greater certainty about youth absorption into the labour market and their soft landing into the world of work, I noted with appreciation that the Minister of Finance touched on this in his budget speech.

As we build the fabric of this great nation, restore its soul and brighten its future.

Unlike with the youth of 1976, this government is on the side of the Youth of today, we are partners in reconstruction. The unfolding process to renew the Youth Development Policy led by Minister Pahad will intensify how we confront these vexing issues many of them are from the throes of our inherited tragic history.

Honourable members, the needs of our young people are not abstract or a pie in the sky. They are very very real. Most of our youth in South Africa just need someone to give them 'a break'.

We also know this economy will never reach its full potential without the full engagement of the younger citizens, our women and black people in general. These are the people on whom growing the economy faster and more equitably equally rests. An estimated 4 million of them are out of school, unemployed, and with only 10 or less years of schooling. They too are part of the young population that must be empowered to make our future bright, they need our attention soonest. It is for that reason that we have done a study on private sector funding of youth development, which is estimated to be at R7 billion. Their funding and our own programmes as government do not target the above category of young people well enough. This week we will meet to discuss how we can target and design our programmes together for greater impact on these young lives whose great potential we are denying ourselves. Abo Trompies e Mitchells Plain, aboNtoko Emlazi kwa V, abo Bro Tsepo e Qwaqwa.

They are young able bodied and unskilled but trainable qha! They should not be left to form the next generation of Second Economy citizens.

Thankfully our democracy has opened possibilities for millions of our Youth who are slowly but surely making their presence felt in the public sector, community, economy, science, education and many other fields.

It is important not to define success to our young people only in terms of business and wealth accumulation; service, professionalism and academic excellence are of equal value and most times even of greater virtue. When many of you, honourable members, left school some of the careers and industries in the market today did not even exist. In the next ten years there will be new industries and careers for which new qualifications and skills will be needed and for which our young and old must prepare. In the work we do in the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) we align the economic growth trajectory with skills requirements. We have already enabled at least five thousand young graduates in training and employment placements in South Africa and almost a thousand overseas. These placements are driven by the Independent Development Trust (IDT), assisted by the Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF), foreign embassies, many departments including Foreign Affairs who in future will play an even more significant role in international placements.

We have been pleasantly surprised to find Black young rural women with amazing qualifications, eagerness and intellect. Some we have placed where they can fast-track their acquisition of experience and skills. I would like to thank many companies in South Africa and abroad who have assisted us in this work. For young adults, on the margins, our Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) programme will also play a greater role when it is in full steam, especially technical ABET. The National Youth Service will give them 'a break'.

We are glad that the National Youth Service (NYS) will meet the target set by the President in the state of the nation address. I would like to thank our departments who have allocated resources to the NYS and some who have already started with implementation. I would like to thank the departments of Public Works, Defence, Home Affairs, Social Development, Health, Water Affairs and Forestry, Housing, municipalities and many more for coming to the party.

Our training of artisans by both government and private sector and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) is another very direct response to the demands for skills and gaps identified by JIPSA in our growing economy. With the R415,8 billion government expenditure committed for infrastructure, our government is delivering on a key Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) objective, which has also raised the investment levels in this economy to significant new heights. As the President has stated, gross fixed capital investments, much of which is in infrastructure, rose from 14.7% of GDP in 2002 to over 19.2% of GDP in the last quarter of 2006. SOEs are making progress, Eskom's power stations have been approved and tenders for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) have been approved. National public transport plan has been finalised and approved. ACSA is on schedule. Transnet orders for locomotives and rolling stocks are in the pipeline. This progress is a relief as infrastructure is the largest component of money committed by government to AsgiSA. We have a dedicated person in the Presidency who is monitoring and liaising with colleagues who are working on the infrastructure programme.

We are worried about capital goods implications hence the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services (PCAS) are working with the economic cluster, to address this. I would like to thank the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) who has done a study on the exact capital goods requirements. The study is now being discussed with the stakeholders.

Honourable members, we are seized with issues of poverty and we are putting greater emphasis on eradicating poverty in a predictable manner. To date even our worst critics agree that government's outreach to 13 million beneficiaries, who are the poorest of the poor is unprecedented and is the only reliable income for most extremely poor households, families, poor children, Gogos, and disabled persons. Our critics also agree that our social wage, in its totality, is very generous and also unprecedented for a developing country. That is why we also know how to identify the unserved groups in the second economy who do not receive any grants or education or pre-pensioned adults. We can target them with a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy, such that they will exit the poverty cycle into self-reliance. It is not true that government does not care for the poor; we did not manufacture the 13 million beneficiaries. Who else in this country is doing so much with such dedication and is even committed to do more? Our government will implement an interim anti-poverty campaign while it is developing the comprehensive anti-poverty strategy and will identify households and individuals in dire poverty.

We are committed to intervening in collaboration with the families through a strategy for each family and individual. In that process we seek to empower families to take responsibility to end poverty in their own family for generations to come. The social cluster and PCAS are seized with this work of empowering the family in the fight against poverty.

We also acknowledge that provision of social protection through income transfers is only an element but is the right choice.

Our commitment is also to end gender-based poverty, which is persisting at the bottom of the poverty pyramid. These women and poor people, in general, are the people who do not have jobs they are not in fortunate positions like you and the many other who are employed by government, private sector, or self employed. Our responsibility as this government is to ensure state resources are spent in a manner that is not biased against the poorest of the poor because they only depend on us for health care, for pension, for the child grant, for free education, for free water, for basic infrastructure and they have no bargaining power and nobody to bargain with. Those of us, the people from my party who were voted overwhelmingly by the poorest of the poor must balance between the needs of the poorest of the poor and the legitimate needs of our salaried employees.

Honourable members, we made a commitment to achieve universal access to basic services earlier than the timeframe set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), our targets for 2014 are more ambitious on energy, water, sanitation and within tighter time frames. We have to defy the prediction that all of Africa will not meet the MDG targets. That is not an option for us and we believe it is possible for us to meet our targets. But to do that our red tape in government especially where we are dependant on each other, must GO!

Madam Speaker and Honourable President, I am now convinced that the work done by Department of Provincial and Local Government (dplg), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), JIPSA, the private sector, the excellent work by Department of Home Affairs in facilitating permits so we can recruit foreign skills, the returning South Africans from Diaspora, and retired professionals is paying off.

With this mobilisation of skills for municipalities, we can end the skills shortage and can end it in all municipalities. We can even do better with secondmends. However, our own red tape among national departments, provinces, within departments and inter-governmentally must GO! So getting rid of the red tape needs as much attention as the skills issues.

Honourable President, Madam Speaker, Nani nonke Malunga ahloniphekileyo, following the provincial visits I undertook with Director-General, Reverend Frank Chikane, we have gained further insights into challenges faced by provinces and their commitment to get it right! The process of eradication of the bucket system remains a priority in all our provinces and impressive progress is being made. I would also like to thank the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) for their excellent work. We engaged very frankly with colleagues in the provinces on the challenges. To date we have visited the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and North West focusing on the performance of Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS), AsgiSA projects, basic service delivery, human resource development (HRD), youth and women's development, safety and social and governance issues!

In each province we have been assisted by the dplg and affected national departments on the specific challenges of each province. Some of our general conclusions from our visits so far include:
* Urgency to ensure hospital revitalisation in all provinces is given all the support, especially where there are sound and agreed business plans and the need for human resources in health.
* Provision of quality education and great need to ensure support at each of the thirty thousand schools in the country, starting with the neediest.
* Filling of vacancies and need for better recruitment, retention strategies and shared pools of skills including secondments and foreign skills.
* Financial management challenges, though improving, a lot of support is still needed. The involvement of the National Treasury in the Municipal Public Finance Management Act Unit is bearing fruit in some provinces. Qhubekani!
* In Local Economic Development (LED) planning capability we see a glaring need to ensure macro alignment of LED with macro-economic opportunities, it does not mean LED is just about small projects. Otherwise, how else do we deal with large unemployment in municipalities. We have not seen enough utilisation of government business to initiate large-scale sustainable, low entry for small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) such as in waste management.
We noticed improvements with regard to:
* Environmental Impact Assessment.
* HIV and AIDS management and efforts to manage tuberculosis (TB). There is a greater need for support given urgency as explained by the Minister of Health in her budget vote.
* Pockets of improvement in infrastructure roll out.
* Inter-governmental relations are much better.
* Improving food security especially because of the social grants.

We noted progress in AsgiSA projects such as the Dube Trade Port in KwaZulu-Natal, Umzimvubu in Eastern Cape, Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) in the North West.

Jobs for Growth is an attempt to grow local jobs, with an ambitious target of creating jobs especially for women. We are thankful to the Independent Development Trust (IDT) for its support in this work. Jobs for Growth offers training to co-operatives and micro enterprises, capacity to produce commercial articles and marketing. The majority of these entrepreneurs are in agriculture. This programme compliments the work of the DTI. The work in the area of SMMEs has to be in much larger scale than it is now to have the desirable impact. Sectors in the National Industrial Strategy and large business are a necessary link in the development of small businesses. We are awaiting the work on the set-asides for SMMEs and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) from Government as well as work on the timeous payment of SMMEs by government to be completed.

Like the President, I find it hard to believe that our economy is not growing faster that the statistics indicate. Just the demand for energy tells the story. I must add we need you to promote ENERGY EFFICIENCY.

As we grow, the challenge however, is how we unleash growth opportunities in relation to needs of people in the second economy, in the most direct, quick and sustainable manner. As Honourable Members know the Office of the Deputy President is assigned to work on the complex matter of the second economy together with all the clusters in government, as this work cuts across all of government. This is work in progress and we will share with this house, once the work is ready. That does not stop us from continuously addressing the problems as we currently know them. I am particularly pleased to see how ICT companies are drawing in young people from poor communities to provide them with cutting edge skills.

In the ensuing collaborating approach within AsgiSA, we are seeing more companies and provincial governments intensifying training of engineers, artisans, project managers, information and communication technology (ICT) and financial professionals. These initiatives will augment the numbers of graduates expected from Universities as per the work done by the department of education with Jipsa. I would like to thank the JIPSA Secretariat and the participating departments for their hard work. Let me also thank the department of labour for the progress made on the artisans. We must sustain the pace in relation to the regulations that will define what an artisan is and we have to bring to the close the issue of National Qualification Framework (NQF) review.

We also encourage all of you, Honourable Members and the people in your communities, to participate in the mentoring initiatives, under the theme 'every child is my child', where young people and adults, mentor younger people and children. One such programme is the Big Brother and Big Sister programme driven by Umsobomvu Youth Fund and the National Youth Commission. We have a big shortage of adult males as mentors and the young boys have asked us to find them good male role models. Can all the good men in this house stand up be counted! We also encourage corporates to initiate their own mentoring schemes where their employees will be the 'Big' and we will supply them with the 'small'. All our children, especially, the vulnerable ones need special attention. We need more middle class people to embrace this programme.

Leader of Government Business

As the Leader of Government Business (LOGB) we provide an interface between the Executive and Parliament. I thank members of the executive and presiding officers for raising sharply the issues that continue to bedevil effective co-ordination in this area of our work.

We are all committed to solving these problems in both houses, to work better where there is legislation that need collaboration between different departments, therefore, different committees and to shorten the time it takes to process that type of legislation.

I thank you for passing the Sexual Offences Bill in this house and we must use the lessons learnt to work better. We must use this experience to expedite the Child Justice Bill which the department of Justice is bringing back for further consideration.

We appreciate the interest Members show in the work of government through the questions posed to the executive, myself and the President. There is room for improvement to ensure that Questions are tabled for a useful purpose.

I am pleased that Parliament is close to finalising its approach to its oversight work. From the Executive side, more work needs to be put into ensuring that the Executive responds to issues raised by Parliament in their oversight work and particularly in reports adopted by the House. The LOGB Unit in the Cabinet office will be crucial in this regard.

I wish to thank Ms Vanessa Calvert and Ms Judy Cornish, from the support office in Parliament of the Leader of Government Business for the important work they perform in this area. My Parliamentary Counsellor, Ms Dorothy Motubatse is on extended sick leave and we wish her a speedy recovery. In her absence, John Jeffery, President's Parliamentary Counsellor provides an excellent assistant service to my work.

South African National AIDS Council (SANAC)

Madame Speaker, the fight for a healthier nation, free of preventable diseases continues to be a shared vision by many South Africans. This has been aptly demonstrated through the vigorously restructured and reinvigorated South African National Aids Council (SANAC).

I would like to thank the leadership of the Department of Health, other national departments, professionals, civil society and all those who have contributed to this process which has led to the consensus that we have on the National Strategic Plan.

Madame Speaker, I am certain that in both word and deed, Honourable Members will be found in the forefront of this battle against HIV and AIDS.

Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM)

South Africans must also work together on rebuilding our society. The majority of South Africans are committed to a shared and better future. We urge civil society, professionals to work for social cohesion to plough back in the communities. To fight against the few, in our communities, who engage in criminal activities. We need to reclaim our neighbourhoods. The MRM initiative in our communities, therefore, deserves our support and involvement.

2010

Like MRM, the 2010 FIFA World Cup is rooted in a broader project of nation-building.

Our President remarked, in a letter to FIFA President Sir Joseph S Blatter, that "the fundamentals of this bid lie in our resolve to ensure that the 21st century unfolds as a century of growth and development in Africa".

Fact is that we can report that this FIFA World Cup is already the most successful FIFA World Cup ever. It has generated a massive 3.2 billion US dollars in signed agreements - more than any other World Cup. In addition FIFA has donated 70 million US dollars towards the legacy programme, our government has approved R19 billion worth of infrastructure and that South African companies have invested more than R700 million into this event.

We stand in front of you here today, proud in the knowledge that the jobs that are being created are benefiting the poor around the country. Our hearts are warmed by the construction worker in Port Elizabeth who said that the job she has building the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is her first since 1989. We rejoice in the statement of a worker at Soccer City who said that he was not just building a stadium, but that he was helping to build our country. That is the spirit!

We will unveil opportunities for SMMEs at the 2010 Business Opportunities Conference to be hosted on 19 June 2007. Government will partner with the FIFA and the LOC in this event. Did you know that:

* We chose our host cities one year ahead of schedule?

* We completed our legislative programme to give effect to the Government Guarantees much earlier than any other host nation?

* We are nearing the final stages of our selection process for the location of the International Broadcast Centre?

We will have an opportunity to repay this confidence when the world descends to Durban in November 2007 when the first big associated event will be held on South African soil. The Preliminary Draw will bring together nations from around the world after they signed up in record numbers to participate in the 2010 FIFA World Cup TM in South Africa. No less than 204 countries signed up for this competition - a record in FIFA's books.

Conclusion

I want to conclude by reminding the house that the people of South Africa have given us an overwhelming mandate to address the agenda of the poor while we unite the country.

Moral regeneration remains a concern of all our people, rich and poor, and different race groups. We need to put greater effort into this agenda.

I have no doubt that in the work that PCAS and the social cluster is undertaking on comprehensive anti-poverty strategy and ways of driving pro-employment growth, we will emerge with second economy interventions that respond to the needs of the poor. Nothing is more important to us than cracking this complex challenge that is not unique to South Africa.

I want to thank you Honourable Members and Presiding Officers, the acting Chief whip of the ruling party for your support, colleagues in the executive, our team in the Presidency led by Reverend Chikane, the advisory team, the excellent service provided by the team from PCAS led by DG Joel Netshitenzhe, the protecting team, Minister Pahad and the Chief, you Honourable President and lastly my family and friends for their support,

Issued by: The Presidency
12 June 2007