13 June 2000.
Issued by Office of the Presidency
Madame Speaker,
Mr President,
Mr Deputy President,
Honourable Members,
Ladies and Gentlemen
This Budget Vote, and focus of The Presidency, is about addressing the scourge of poverty, it is about rooting out discrimination, it is about attending to long-neglected problems such as those related to gender, youth, the ageing, children and the disabled.
It is a Vote for the values of a new, democratic South Africa, fairly represented in this House. It is a Vote about continuing a process which will eventually lead to a significant redistribution of wealth in South Africa - a country where life was, and in too many cases still is, over-comfortable for the few and over-onerous for the many. It is a Vote about change, transformation and renewal. As Minister in the Presidency my responsibilities include the development of policies and plans to address the economic, social and political empowerment of people with disabilities, women, and youth as well as the rights of children and it should be noted that the Presidency takes a significant and growing interest in the ageing. We must also set up mechanisms to monitor the implementation of these policies and plans and ensure that all available support is focused to minimise the time-frames required to achieve maximum impact.
Let us look at these tasks in a world context.
The key battle in the world today is the fight to overcome the poverty and under-development of the vast majority of its people. We must tackle those challenges in our own country with an awareness of implications at a regional, continental and international level. Democratic South Africa can ill afford to play a role of Fortress South Africa. We cannot survive as an island of comparative well-being surrounded by a sea of desperate want. What we do locally must be designed to have a positive ripple effect on the outer world. We must also seek support from our allies outside our own narrow borders.
In 1994 we inherited a tragic legacy of inequality in South Africa. The economy was in very serious trouble. Huge pools, and oceans, of poverty existed in both urban and rural areas. The majority of our citizens were denied clean water, electricity, housing and proper health, education and welfare.
If we look at the real manifestations of poverty in our country, it is clear that the most vulnerable and poorest of the poor are African women in general and in particular African women in rural areas. The poverty of our rural women is a reflection of the disempowerment of women throughout the world. The situation is worse if you are a rural African woman who is disabled or elderly, or a rural African child, disabled or not.
In dealing with the challenges of poverty and how it affects the most vulnerable, we cannot merely offer band-aid, temporary support or welfare programmes. We need radically to re-structure society so that all our fellow South Africans share the same human and socio-economic rights.
I recall a remark Martin Luther King made in 1963. Dealing with the subject of philanthropy, that mixed blessing of the globalised world in which we live, he said:
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
This highlights the need to step up the relentless struggle for social and economic justice all over the world. Well-endowed nations and citizens should not imagine that their charity and aid, which, although welcome, amounts to little more than crumbs from the rich man's table, can possibly, of themselves, correct the imbalances which have given rise to poverty.
No! The real way ahead lies not in their charitable acts but in their will to invest. Invest in a way that will in the long run, fundamentally transform the international economic order. This must also mean the transfer of resources, debt relief and indeed the cancellation of debts in a new strategic partnership between rich and poor. Our objective is to transform South Africa and also seek the engagement of the rest of the world, so that the maximum number of people can share in the better life. What is sought is not only economic well-being, but the dignity that goes with it.
This is the great unfinished business of the 20th century. We demand social justice for both North and South, and greater efforts towards the eradication of poverty and wretchedness. Our President Thabo Mbeki is pursuing this cause with growing acclaim among world leaders as the 21st century unfolds.
Now let us examine our own progress at home.
The main task is empowerment. And, even if one is to exclude the vast and critical question of race for a moment, we have made huge strides in the empowerment of women. This is reflected, for instance, in the national Parliament where women number close to one third and in the Cabinet 30% of the Ministers and 60% of the Deputy Ministers are women - placing us among the world leaders in this respect. Our record in Parliament would be even better if opposition parties followed the ANC lead by setting quotas to ensure increasing recognition of the capabilities of women in the realm of politics.
We have also made progress in seeking to ensure gender equity in government and parastatals. I suggest that it is the private sector that has lagged behind in this respect. If you doubt this, have a look at the faces in the business appointments sections in the Sunday newspapers.
We have made our reports on international commitments to SADC, the OAU, the UN and Commonwealth and to those monitoring progress since the big push for women's rights in Beijing. And we have found many nations who look to South Africa as a shining example of what can and should be done.
We must congratulate the women who gathered in New York over the past week for the progressive conclusions reached during the session.
I am particularly pleased to note that they have acknowledged the strong possibilities offered by the globalisation process, while acknowledging its negative impact, especially on developing countries.
But we need to do far more. We must give women, in particular in the rural areas, real power over their own lives at every level, and for this there must be all-round commitment. So far, the Office on the Status of Women has established national and provincial directorates. It has carried out an audit and extensive consultations, with input from the Commission for Gender Equality and hundreds of other stakeholders. It has drawn up a policy framework and identified priorities.
Government enjoys a high level of legitimacy among women as a target group of the South African Gender programme, but there are undeniably high expectations of delivery. Whereas women want greater access to government resources, elimination of all forms of violence against women and eradication of poverty, there are as yet no clear performance indicators and time frames to guide government in the call for delivery. To bridge this gap, the OSW is developing a National Gender Action Plan. Such a plan will provide a common understanding between government and civil society on outputs, outcomes, performance indicators and time frames.
We work from the premise that gender equality is an agreed national goal. That is what is just, and nothing less than justice will do. One of the priorities is the transformation of the civil service in this respect.
The reconstruction of the civil service must be carried out in such a way that gender issues are addressed in strategic planning and action as an integral part of the entire programme and not in an isolated manner. It is through this that gender will become part of the overall governance of our nation. Gender justice must become a way of life in South Africa, not an add-on or an after-thought.
We are in the final stages of setting the framework for a National Gender Policy, a framework that has been extensively influenced by the work we were engaged in at government level in the last four years. This framework will be translated into a Plan of Action for the empowerment of women, bringing together the efforts and specific contributions of a range of departments and provinces.
The identification of Gender Focal Points in national departments and the Offices on the Status of Women in the provinces and the expressed commitment to achieve these bear witness to a groundswell of determination and activity which has laid the foundations for transformation. We expect to begin to see the fruits of this hard work during the next few years.
The management of cross-cutting issues such as Violence against Women and the Women's Response to HIV/AIDS remains one of the serious challenges for the OSW. While this is a clearly gender-based activity the technical work often resides in other sectors such as Welfare, Health and Justice.
Many of the issues we have to face in relation to the empowerment of women are echoed when we examine the needs of our disabled, our youth and our children. I shall not repeat these points, but limit myself to the issues, which pertain specifically to these other disadvantaged citizens of our nation.
In the realm of the disabled, if we do not lack commitment, we do still lack adequate information. We do not yet have an adequate audit of the extent of the challenges we face or the extent to which people with disabilities have been integrated in the structures of government. Similarly, pending state tender board approval, a "Disabled People's Budget" project is expected to study and report on the extent and impact of government spending on disability. We could be speaking of about five-to-six million disabled people, which is a huge challenge. But we have made the necessary sea-change in opinion, viewing as we do the problems of the disabled not as welfare matters but as directly concerning human rights, quality of life issues and access to resources. The Integrated National Disability Strategy has set these parameters and brought about the necessary paradigm shift.
Indicative of this shift is the 11 disabled persons in the benches of parliament. We have more MPs with disabilities than almost any other parliament in the world.
The Office on the Status of the Disabled has embarked on a training programme for all national departments, building capacity around the understanding and implementation of this strategy. Following this series of interventions, the Inter-Departmental Disability Co-ordination Committee was recently launched.
Education for people with disabilities and the integration of these learners where appropriate and practical into mainstream education remains a challenge. We are working in tandem with the Department of Education to examine this question in depth and arrive at carefully considered policies, avoiding rushing into decisions which may be philosophically sound but practically impossible within budget constraints, whilst maximising integration wherever it might genuinely benefit the learner.
The sheltered workshops we inherited for the adult disabled are little more than places of safety and sometimes not so safe. Tragically, they often merely make provision for disabled people to while away their productive time unproductively. The need to transform these so as to develop and sustain economic viability and personal growth, as well as secure jobs for people with disabilities, has been discussed with the Departments of Welfare and Labour. At the moment we are not spending wisely. We want rather to invest with the possibility of real returns in terms of employment and economic sustainability. This area will be one of our priorities in the next twelve months.
The economic integration and empowerment of people with disabilities was enhanced through the launch of the Thabo Mbeki Development Trust in December 1999.
In 1999 President Mbeki indicated that we will work towards an accelerated delivery of assistive devices for disabled people. We have made this true through the assistance of various international friends in the USA and Taiwan.
One of the main challenges remains the building of technical capacity. In this regard we are currently exploring a number of options for possible international financial support. Our relationship with the Swedish International Development Agency is entering its second year and is proving helpful. The fruits of targeted work on the fronts of employment equity for disabled people can be seen in the Employment Equity legislation this house passed. Ours is now to ensure the monitoring of effective implementation of these laws.
October this year will see the opening of the 2000 Paralympics. In 1996 South African disabled athletes returned from Atlanta with medals, world records and pride. We envisage more successes at this year's international showcase of triumph over the adversity of disability.
Now we need to turn to our youth.
Youth development and the challenges facing young people in South Africa today are issues which have been at the forefront of many of our minds over the last few days. These are an appropriate focus today, three days before we commemorate the 1976 uprisings. Our youth must play a key role in addressing the issue of poverty. We need their active participation in the economy and their engagement with socio-political issues which are key to the success of the African Renaissance.
Appropriately the National Youth Commission unanimously with the youth sector agreed to focus all Youth Day celebrations on the fight against HIV/Aids.
The foundations of an integrated approach to youth development were laid not only in the Youth Policy, handed to former president Mandela in 1997, but in the practice of co-ordinating and monitoring government initiatives to address the challenges young people face. These include the possible uses of the Skills Development Fund and other Department of Labour initiatives like the skills programmes, learnerships, entrepreneurship opportunities and other training possibilities for unemployed or under-qualified youth, helping them to find career paths structured in relation to qualifications and standards registered on our National Qualifications Framework.
This is not to say the NYC is without serious challenges as a statutory body. Challenges to all of us on a broader level - youth unemployment; the high and increasing incidence of HIV-AIDS amongst young people; crime; poverty; the absence of accessible economic opportunities by young people - all these require an acceleration of the countrywide implementation of the National Youth Policy.
The foundational plans for National Youth Service and Youth Economic Participation are already being put into practice through pilot programmes this year, ensuring they become ongoing national realities benefiting young people. For example the training of unemployed young people in the fields of literacy and environmental affairs as well as the youth enterprise support programme, developed and co-ordinated in conjunction with Ntsika Enterprises.
The National Youth Information Service - struggling to cope with the over 100 000 HIV-AIDS and career-related calls received since last November - will need to be dramatically upgraded to accommodate the increasing demand.
The NYC has experienced problems with regard to administration and management capacity. Our office has initiated a process in conjunction with the NYC to remedy these weaknesses.
Perhaps the most difficult task for all of us concerns the Rights of the Child. Particularly in the case of young children, these aspiring citizens are the most vulnerable of us all.
In the realm of the vulnerable and neglected, the children of our nation, we have diligently reported to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. South Africa presented it first country report on the implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in February this year; a report hailed by the UN Committee as one of the better reports received.
Although we have been commended on the quality of our reports, there have also been responses, which have pointed out gaps and challenges facing us.
We have secured valuable support from the private sector and civil society to launch a sustained public awareness campaign on the rights of the child. It is frequently not only children but adults who need better education on this matter. And we are seeking to do just this.
We have no illusions about the sensitivity of these initiatives. We hope to make children and parents aware of the rights of the child, and we recognise that these are traditionally considered a matter best dealt with in the confines of the home. With the generous assistance from Telkom we have secured the skills and networks of the National Children's Rights Committee to do extensive advocacy work in this field over the next twelve months.
The Children's Promise project has been successfully launched with the support of Woolworths, South African Airways and MTN. The first one-stop centres for children will flow from this initiative soon. The establishment of these one-stop centres is an initiative developed in close conjunction with the GCIS Multi-Purpose Communications Centres and with private sector support.
Further to this government will, in the coming year, pay very special attention to the multiple and complex questions concerning the ageing. This issue is also receiving greater prominence in international forums. In our own country we owe a great debt of gratitude to our elders, who for so long bore the brunt of oppression and exploitation.
The Freedom Park Trust as part of the Legacy Project was finally launched on 1 June this year. This important work to capture our history will continue.
Madame Speaker,
You will realise that most of the matters and initiatives referred to here involve more than just the Presidency. A host of departments, the private sector and civil society are involved in these joint efforts. These efforts are of crucial importance in our fight against poverty and degradation.
Here we have the chance, literally to change the world. But we must take it step by step.
We have a sense of direction. And we have a sense of commitment to those who were previously so vulnerable and so neglected, even to the point of being invisible, in the land of their birth.
As Wally Serote wrote in 1997:
please
let us be intolerant of evil
of racism
of sexism
of poverty
of disease
let us pull the electricity
and the water pipe
let us build the houses
and the toilets
let us build the road
and be intolerant of the criminal
let us build the school
let us build the creche
and the clini
c
and the hospital
to turn the mind
to build against evil...
I thank you