The Order of the Day - let the work begin!

It is now just over a month since we held our last local government elections. Our movement has selected the comrades who will serve as Mayors in the municipal councils we control. In keeping with the law, the municipal councils have now been constituted. The new local governments are in place. With all this having been done, the principal Order of the Day of our movement is - let the work begin!

Happily, the overwhelming majority of the municipalities have acted to respect this directive. And yet the truth is that there are some municipalities governed by our movement in which this Order of the Day is being wilfully ignored by people who carry our membership cards.

These are the few instances where ANC councillors, supported by factions within the structures of our movement, are openly defying the decisions of our constitutional structures by refusing to accept the comrades chosen by these structures as our mayoral candidates.

Those who engage in these activities do not care that what they are doing is bringing the ANC, of which they are members, into disrepute. They are not concerned that by their actions they seek to weaken our movement's organisational discipline, condemn it to a state of anarchy, and thus reduce its capacity to lead the people and discharge its historic mission. They are intent to repudiate the commitment that has driven our movement for more than nine decades - to serve the people of South Africa!

The determination to inflict instability on the same poor black communities that sacrificed everything to liberate our country, by fighting over who among our members shall be Mayor, is not driven by any genuine desire to advance the interests of the people. Neither does it reflect any real political or ideological differences such as would explain the intense conflict over which member of the ANC should wear the mayoral chain.

What it does reflect is a grossly negative tendency in our ranks, to which our movement and the overwhelming majority of our members are fundamentally opposed. This is the abuse of membership of our movement to gain positions of state power in order to use these positions for personal enrichment and benefit. This is what lies at the base of some of the factional struggles that have emerged over which particular individual member of the ANC should be Mayor, as opposed to any other member of our movement.

In these instances, factions have formed around particular individual members of the ANC because these factions see such individuals as representatives and promoters of their selfish interests, centred on creating job and economic opportunities for members of the faction concerned. These factions engage in struggle over mayoral positions, as well as the important issue of Municipal Managers, to gain exclusive access to, and monopolise what they consider to be the material spoils of access to state power to which they believe they are entitled by virtue of occupying positions of authority.

The law requires that each of our municipalities should have an Integrated Development Plan (IDP), elaborated together with the municipal electorate, focused on meeting the popularly agreed social and economic needs of the local communities.

All ANC councils are obliged to base these IDPs both on the Election Manifesto we presented to the masses of our people as we urged them to mandate us to form the new local governments, and the outcomes of the IDP consultation with the people.

This obligation is binding on all ANC Mayors. These cadres of our movement have a duty to ensure that the municipal governments they lead address the social and economic needs of all the people in their municipalities, without any discrimination of any kind. All of them must be committed to the same developmental vision spelt out in our movement's Local Government Election Manifesto.

Nobody in the communities they lead, least of all members of the ANC, should, without just and demonstrable cause, conclude that one ANC Mayor rather than another ANC Mayor is best placed to respect the commitments that our movement, and not the individual Mayors, made to the people.

Not a single ANC Mayor, regardless of personal popularity, occupies his or her seat by virtue of having been elected on the basis of a personal election manifesto. Not a single ANC Mayor falls outside the voluntary ANC discipline, movement oversight and legal framework that binds every member of the ANC, regardless of the government position they might occupy, including the Presidency of the Republic.

Our movement will never knowingly allow that any ANC Mayor should merely serve the interests of members and supporters of our movement or factions thereof, rather than the interests of the communities they are elected to govern. This constitutes an important part of the objective stated in the Freedom Charter - that the people shall govern!

Our movement has made a commitment to the masses of our people that we will ensure that the councillors they elected honour the undertakings we made to these masses. Among other things, this requires that we immerse and induct our leaders in local government - the Mayors and councillors - into the culture, traditions and values of our movement. Among other things, we must expose these leaders to the continuum of the positions adopted by our movement over many decades.

We held our 49th and first National Conference after liberation, in Bloemfontein in December 1994. In his Political Report to the Conference on 17 December, our then President, Nelson Mandela, said: "And so we assemble today, at this the 49th National Conference of the African National Congress, converging from the Union Buildings and Tuynhuys; from parliament and regional legislatures; from ministries and provincial governments - as the majority organisation in the first ever democratically elected government of our country. We have converged from the shop-floor and informal settlements; from places of worship and learning; from urban and rural areas; as business-persons and professionals - African, Coloured, Indian and white - a microcosm of South African society.

"For the first time in the history of our country, we have under one roof, sharing the same vision, and planning as equals, delegates from every sector of South African society, including those who hold the highest offices in the land. This in itself vividly captures the qualitative change our country has undergone - a dream fulfilled and a pledge redeemed.

"That pledge, made in this (Mangaung/Bloemfontein) mother-city of the ANC 83 years ago by yet another representative gathering, was to transform South Africa into a non-racial and democratic society. As we meet in the environs where they planted the seed, we can proudly say to the founders: the country is in the hands of the people; the tree of liberty is firmly rooted in the soil of the motherland!...

"We have assembled at this Conference precisely to chart the way forward to a truly free and prosperous nation. The real measure of success or failure of this Conference will be whether we will emerge motivated and stronger than before, and whether the decisions we take bring practical relief to the millions who so graphically demonstrated their confidence in the ANC and in democracy last April...

"In as much as we succeeded in mobilising the people for the victory we have scored, we have today the responsibility to mobilise them to become active participants in improving their quality of life, (and) in defending and advancing our newly-won democracy. We have to inculcate among all our people the culture of taking responsibility for the task of reconstruction and development. Neither Government nor the ANC alone can realise these plans."

In his Closing Address on 22 December to the same 49th ANC National Conference, President Nelson Mandela said:

"Like several conferences before, this one was also a mirror image of the new South Africa we are building...For the first time in our history, delegates discussed, not resistance, but reconstruction and development...Our delegates were concerned with the implementation of the RDP, bettering the lives of our people. The level of discussion was very high and the concerns of people on the ground - the building of a better life for all - formed an important part of the agenda...

"As has been pointed out here by many speakers, what is of immediate concern to us now are the forthcoming local government elections, which we must win at all costs. In many respects, these elections are far more important - far more crucial - than the national elections on the 27th of April. It is in the level of local government that we come into physical contact with the problems of the people. It is at that level that delivery in terms of the RDP has to take place.

"We cannot be general in fighting (the) local government elections. We have to move from the elevated, from the general tone of our work, to specifics. At that level what the people want to hear is: how many jobs are you going to create within the next 12 months? how many houses are you going to build? how many clinics? how many schools? how many boreholes are you going to make? You have to know the conditions in that particular area very thoroughly to make an impact on people at that level...

"It has happened in many countries that a liberation movement comes into power and the freedom fighters of yesterday become members of the government. Sometimes without any idea of mischief, precisely because they are committed and hard working, they concentrate so much on their portfolios that they forget about the people who put them in power, and become a class, a separate entity unto themselves, who are not accountable to their membership, and who rely on law, that now I am a Cabinet Minister, the political organisation that put me in power can do nothing.

"One of the ways of preventing that temptation is for members of the Cabinet to go regularly to their areas, talk to the people. Go to the squatters or informal settlements, enter those rooms and see how people live, talk to them and also explain to them, on a regular basis, what the government is doing to give them feedback as to what the government is doing to address their needs...

"The Cabinet, the outgoing Cabinet, as well as the incoming Cabinet, consists of highly motivated, able and hard-working men and women who, as I have said, work 24 hours a day to discharge their duties. Members of the Cabinet have done so in order to honour the pledges we made in the run-up to the elections. We are fortunate to have such remarkable leaders in the government.

"They will guarantee, and I hope the present (ANC) Executive as well, that the endemic corruption, waste and inefficiency that characterised the apartheid government will be tackled effectively in the weeks and months and years that lie ahead."

The messages communicated 12 years ago by President Nelson Mandela on behalf of the then NEC of our movement, about the tasks of the ANC in a liberated South Africa, constitute our movement's programme to this day. When, today, we say - let the work begin! - we refer to our post-liberation tasks spelt out by Nelson Mandela at our 49th National Conference, just 8 months after our victory in our country's historic first democratic elections of 1994.

Accordingly, the Order of the Day to the ANC councillors elected on 1 March, and the ANC Mayors chosen by the municipal councils, is that they must:

• chart the way forward to a truly free and prosperous nation, continuing to open the new national chapter of freedom and dignity;
• translate our movement's overall perspective, as reflected in the Local Government Election Manifesto and other documents, into specific programmes of action relevant to their areas, relating to various important matters such as economic development and job creation, housing, water provision, health care, and so on;
• ensure the implementation of the resultant reconstruction and developments programmes, to address the concerns of the masses of our people, focused on the achievement of the objective of building a better life for all;
• mobilise the people to become active participants in improving their quality of life, inculcating among all our people the culture of taking responsibility for the task of reconstruction and development within the spirit of the People's Contract;
• ensure that in the weeks and months and years that lie ahead they tackle the endemic corruption, waste and inefficiency that characterised the apartheid government, refusing to allow the entrenchment of these unacceptable phenomena in the democratic body politic;
• fully appreciate the fact it is at the level of local government that our elected representatives come into physical contact with the problems of the people, the level at which reconstruction and development has to take place;
• inform themselves about the conditions in their particular area very thoroughly, and maintain close and regular contact with the people: they must therefore go to the squatters or informal settlements, and other areas, enter people's homes and see how people live, talk to and listen to them, and also explain to them, on a regular basis, what the government is doing, giving them a feedback as to what the government is doing to address their needs;
• operate as hard-working men and women who work 24 hours a day to discharge their duties and honour the pledges we made to the people; and,
• work to ensure that our movement is united around the clear vision spelt out in our Local Government Election Manifesto and other policy documents -a vision that guides all of us wherever we are, within and outside government. We are one ANC; and we should carry out our historic mission as such.

As our newly elected local government leaders begin their work, to honour our commitments to the masses of our people, they must constantly recall what Nelson Mandela said at the first National Conference of our movement after Liberation Day - "We can proudly say to the founders, the country is in the hands of the people: the tree of liberty is firmly rooted in the soil of the motherland!"

What this meant then, and means now, 12 years later, is that we had and have arrived at the moment when the motherland, in all its institutions and programmes, will and must, at last, and after many centuries, respond to the genuine interests of all our people, in conditions of liberty for all.

Nothing whatsoever should and will divert our movement and its genuine cadres from the loyal, disciplined and principled defence and pursuit of this perspective, focused on the radical and continuous improvement of the quality of life of all our people and the restoration of the dignity of all these masses. Whether we remain a people's movement or not will be defined by what we do in this regard, and nothing else.

Skills Development

A skills revolution in a nation united

The Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition is now open for business. This concrete step marks the culmination of an intense but exciting process which began when Cabinet unveiled the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA) in July last year. The Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA), alongside other educational bodies, are the most important building blocks for ASGISA. If we fail in the human resource and skills development sphere, ASGISA fails. JIPSA has a narrow but important mandate which must begin to yield results within a relatively short space of time. Nothing short of a skills revolution by a nation united will extricate us from the crisis we face. We are addressing logjams, some of which are systemic and therefore in some cases entrenched even in the post apartheid South Africa. The systemic nature of some of our challenges undermine our excellent new policies, at least in the short term, hence the need for interventions such as JIPSA to enhance implementation of our policies.

Only if we have a nation that is united in partnership can we reverse the trend with regard to skills and give our policies a chance to succeed in the medium to long term.

But what is this JIPSA? South Africa is a country that is full of hope and good prospects. The opinion polls universally confirm this. So do the facts on the ground.

The growth of our economy, which is now at more than four percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is proof of that. Yet both unemployment and poverty are still at unacceptably high levels, which means our growth is not fairly shared. The most fatal constraint to shared growth is skills, and it should be noted that skills are not just one of the constraints facing ASGISA but a potentially fatal constraint. That fact should be admitted with emphasis. We have to overcome the shortage of suitable skilled labour if our dreams for this economy are to be realised. The task is huge, and JIPSA is only one of the interventions which seek to address the skills challenges.

Our departments of Education, Labour, Science and Technology, Public Service and Administration and others, as well as Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), private sector and organs of civil society all intervene at different levels.

With JIPSA we are only focusing on scarce and critical skills without which we cannot deliver on our ASGISA commitments and targets. However, JIPSA must make a sustainable, not a superficial, intervention and relate with our universities, technikons and schools, which have a much broader mandate.

Skills are the backbone on which every successful economy relies. We have learnt that from economies such as Malaysia and Japan, and most recently we had interesting discussions with the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland and Prime Minister of New Zealand which can only confirm this essential truth. In both countries, their economic revival had a skills revolution at the core.

Our support for skills development includes poorer schools and increased efforts to support maths, science and English language skills in schools. JIPSA will be focusing specifically on teachers of these subjects. Teaching is being regarded as a scarce and a priority skill.

JIPSA will support the alignment of Further Education and Training (FET) colleges and higher education institutions in their work of producing graduates that we can employ who meet the demand and needs of employers in the public and private sectors. JIPSA will therefore work with both higher education institutions and employers, all of whom are represented in JIPSA.

Those adults who are illiterate and poor, particularly, need to be actively drawn into the economy. JIPSA will indirectly support the Department of Education's work in Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET).

We also need a credible plan with targets and timeframes to train and supply artisans. FETs, the private sector and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are key to delivering artisanal training for the nation.

The skills revolution is the most important task on our shoulders at this point and to succeed we have to be partners and give the subject all we have. We need to put the education challenge above other important tasks for a couple of years until we achieve the desired shift, and can say we are on a safe and secure trajectory.

JIPSA should not duplicate any of the existing structures, but should lean on them. For the work of JIPSA we do not need new policies. So we have to proceed with speed as we change gear to maximise our effort in the chosen direction. In 18 months we must emerge with concrete benefits in alignment with the thrust of many who are here today, and indeed many others with whom we work as we proceed.

Structure

JIPSA is a two-tiered structure comprising a joint task team and a technical working group. The joint task team comprises of 26 members who are leaders in business, labour, higher education and civil society. The joint task team is to be the engine for unblocking acquisition of targeted skills. It will oversee the work of JIPSA and ensure that it delivers on its mandate of acquiring scarce and priority skills in the shortest time possible. It will build partnerships with different institutions and ensure the sustainability of the initiatives of JIPSA.

The technical working group, chaired by Gwede Mantashe, is made up of specialists and experts in areas ranging from research, all levels of education, labour, business and government. The technical working group will identify blockages and seek solutions. It will ensure that systems and programmes are in place to attract the necessary skills, and they will forward and recommend researched interventions for decisions by the task team. The joint task team will fast-track training and ensure that it maintains quality. Secondments and placements will be used extensively to enhance experience.

JIPSA will see to reliable data and engage with training institutions for curriculum relevance and use of under-utilised training facilities, in the public and private sector. A secretariat provided by the National Business Initiative (NBI) creates an opportunity for JIPSA to run uninterruptedly with full-time personnel.

The Department of Home Affairs and the joint task team must look at facilitating the importation of scarce and priority skills to assist us to meet our short to medium term skills demand. In addition to the obvious departments already mentioned, the other crucial departments, especially for specific ASGISA sectors, are the departments of Public Works and Public Enterprises. The Department of Defence is also involved due to the array of training facilities and capabilities programmes they possess.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has an important contribution to make in sourcing and attracting scarce skills from the international community, including Africans in the Diaspora, to assist us to train our people in foreign academic institutions and for international placements when we train people through placements in foreign private companies and governments. South Africa is most sensitive to the brain drain, and the potential of the brain gain, in Africa.

JIPSA will also engage with business to meet its broad-based black economic empowerment obligations to skills development. All empowerment charters have skills development objectives that need to be realised.

We will also look to organised labour to lead and demonstrate innovation in working together with government and business to enhance productivity and secure training for quality jobs. As with ASGISA, JIPSA is not a government programme. It has to be a national agenda. All partners will have to assume meaningful responsibility.

Priority and scarce skills

The immediate focus of JIPSA will be on the skills identified by ASGISA. These include skills needed for infrastructure development in government, private sector and state owned enterprises, the Expanded Public Works Programme and public service and social services delivery.

Then there are the skills required in the sectors that we have prioritised, such as tourism and business process outsourcing. Both are in our short term plans and both need languages and information and communication technology (ICT) skills. Other sectors are agriculture, creative industries, mineral beneficiation, chemicals, forestry, and cross-cutting skills such as finance. Our skills development must also benefit small, micro and medium-sized businesses within these sectors.

Beyond the urgent scarce skills, JIPSA will be sensitive to long-term fundamentals for the supply of skills needed for sustained shared economic growth which benefits all our people. Established educational institutions such as universities, FET institutions and schools, will always be the backbone for the training that JIPSA will need. Obviously JIPSA cannot succeed without standing on the shoulders of these core institutions.

Based on the ASGISA priorities, the following working areas for JIPSA have been identified:

• high level, world class engineering and planning skills for the 'network industries', transport, communications and energy all at the core of our infrastructure programme;
• city, urban and regional planning and engineering skills desperately needed by our municipalities;
• artisan and technical skills, with priority attention to those needed for infrastructure development;
• management and planning skills in education, health and in municipalities;
• teacher training for mathematics, science, ICT and language competence in public education;
• specific skills needed by the priority ASGISA sectors starting with tourism and business process outsourcing and cross-cutting skills needed by all sectors, especially finance, project managers and managers in general;
• skills relevant to the local economic development needs of municipalities, especially developmental economists.

JIPSA will be a support measure for our people who are still locked within the second economy, so that they can also have a chance to participate in the first economy and in the growing South African economy in general. Empowerment through education must be given a big boost in the work of JIPSA.

JIPSA must put in place a system to bring in volunteers, retirees and other people with the skills required and identified by JIPSA. The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) is already playing a critical role in receiving curriculum vitae. Eskom is also recruiting scarce skills for its needs, and this work is being consolidated. The work of the National Advisory Council on Innovation, Human Sciences Research Council, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, SETAs, and departments of Labour and Home Affairs have provided important data with regard to defining scarce and priority skills.

The number of unemployed graduates has grown significantly in the past five years. JIPSA must seek ways of absorbing unemployed graduates into the economy while addressing the mismatch in relation to the type of training offered to these students as compared to skills needed by the job market. Retraining on the job and elsewhere will be part of what JIPSA must assist with to ensure their employment. That work has begun. The Umsobomvu Youth Fund has also helped to access unemployed graduates.

JIPSA will maintain a living database of skills needs in the economy, including providing an understanding of patterns, trends and key indicators of priority skills demand and supply. Various databases and research work exist, from sources such as the departments of Labour, Education and Public Service and Administration, industry bodies, eminent research institutions and university research bodies. These databases are being collated for purposes of synthesis and confirmation of the nature of skills challenges in the priority areas.

In May 2006, training of 100 local government practitioners will commence in the field of project management by Old Mutual in conjunction with the SA Management Development Institute (SAMDI) and Department of Provincial and Local Government.

The Department of Public Works and The Presidency have coordinated a programme in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to secure suitable placement of women in infrastructure projects. Placement offers have also been secured in the hospitality and finance sectors. A total of 100 women and unemployed graduates are targeted. Another 120 women and youth are soon to be placed with the Bombela Consortium to be part of the Gautrain project.

An approach to give women and youth a head start has already been adopted, to ensure that growth is shared with these historically marginalised groups. This year we are celebrating 50 years of struggle by women since that historic march to the Union Buildings to protest against the pass laws. This year also marks the 30th Anniversary of the students' uprising which took place on 16 June 1976.

Therefore, the improvement of the lot of women and youth is uppermost in our minds. JIPSA's work will obviously be much wider than these designated groups. Certain skills will need people who are already trained and able to engage and perform at a higher level and take on supervisory and mentoring roles.

As a country, South Africa has as yet not taken the matter of skills to a skills revolution level. To achieve that, we must be united as a nation in pursuit of this goal. It must be one of the indelible marks of the new, democratic order in which we all share.

Our quest to be a competitive economy and a winning nation depends on us equipping ourselves appropriately. Institutions mandated to advance the skills and human resource development course for the nation form the backbone of JIPSA. It is important that we commit ourselves to ensure the rapid growth of a shared economy which benefits many and not just a few.

** Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee and Deputy President of South Africa. This is an edited version of an address at the launch of the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA), 27 March 2006.

Return to Index