To build a better life for all
The unemployed are often asked: "Why don't you go out and work?" But how can you work when there is no work to do?
We all know that our country faces a huge unemployment crisis, we can see it on our street-corners, we can see it at our factory gates, we can see it in our townships and rural areas. In the last few years, the situation is getting worse.
What are the facts around unemployment?
These facts speak for themselves - the situation is desperate and requires urgent attention from a strong government willing to give strong leadership. The National Party has failed to give this leadership and has lead the country into its most severe economic crisis. Though they now claim to speak for all South Africans, the National Party still has no plan to solve our country's problems - not in the past 40 years and not in the past 4 years.
They have had their turn and they made a bigger mess! Now is the time for a government willing to build a better life for all!
The ANC has a plan to create jobs, fight unemployment and build a better life for all.
We will create jobs and opportunities for millions of people, remove existing restrictions and allow people to help themselves! That is what government should do! This is our 4-point Plan to create jobs in the next 5 years:
Government has the responsibility to ensure that people have work so that they can help themselves. A government that passes the buck or ignores this responsibility is saying to its people: "If you don't want to starve, you can always beg, borrow or steal."
While passes and influx control were still around, the unemployed would be shunted into rural wastelands. Since they realised that this policy was unworkable, the NP have not come up with a plan. They have no plan to create jobs and curb unemployment and they will not admit that this is the main cause of the crime and violence which is wrecking our homes, our neighbourhoods and our country.
The NP government does not take responsibility and has no plan. It is forcing people to rely on hand-outs from the state. The 9 million people who needed food assistance during the drought cost the tax-payer R 440 million in 1993 - and what do we have to show for it?
There are two problems with these kind of hand-outs.
If the ANC proposed that the state should look after the unemployed and the poor, we would surely be accused at best of misusing tax-payers money, and at worst of "socialism" or "communism".
The reality is that the National Party have never had a plan to deal with mass unemployment, particularly not when 99.9% of the unemployed are black.
In their election manifesto, the National Party claim that they have created jobs:
Let us examine these lofty claims
The first mistake made by the NP and their economists is the belief that economic growth itself is enough to create the number of jobs we need to get us out of this mess. Their second mistake is the crazy notion that all you have to do is keep taxes low on the wealthiest South Africans to make the economy grow and create jobs.
The facts are:
These conditions need to change for there to be substantial new investment in our economy. The NP government have had their chance and they have made a mess.
The NP government cannot claim to have brought foreign investors back into the country. Sanctions were lifted because the ANC convinced investors that democracy was on its way. Foreign investors know that it is only an ANC government which can put our economy on a real growth path, which is why planned new investments have climbed from R10 billion a year ago to R50 billion today.
How can the NP claim to be creating jobs ? Since 1990, since the dawn of the "new National Party":
While local workers have faced retrenchment and unemployment, the NP government allowed 4 405 skilled foreign workers onto the job market in 1991 alone. Every year the number grows. Yet they claim to be committed to job creation !??
The NP government also cannot claim that it has been committed to stimulating small business. In the context of massive job losses it is true that the small business sector has created more job opportunities than the formal sector. According to the state's SBDC 75% of new jobs in 1991 were in the informal sector. But were these real jobs and did government support help those most in need? Again the facts speak for themselves:
If the Nats were really committed to job creation and to affirmative action - why can they still not trust black people with money, why are they still not prepared to give the small person a chance? Their so-called commitment smacks of insincerity. Small businesses suffer rather than thrive. If they survive it is in spite of government - not with their help.
The NP blame the economic mess and joblessness on everything but their own mistakes - its all the fault of drought, sanctions, strikes and bad luck. The NP will not take responsibility, they do not have the will and they have no plan. They have had their chance to prove that they have a plan . They have failed to deliver. Now it is our chance.
THE ANC HAS THE WILL AND HAS A PLAN TO TAKE US OUT OF THIS MESS.
When the ANC talks of creating jobs, of taking responsibility for putting the economy on a growth path, on a job-creation path we are berated. The NP, their allies and the right-wing calls us "irresponsible, dangerous and socialist".
How can it be dangerous to have a plan to build a better life for all?
Were the forefathers of our Afrikaner brothers socialist when they implemented job-creation plans in the 1920's and 1930's to solve the 'poor white problem' so that their people could have a better life? Were they socialist when they trained Afrikaners as artisans and brought in job reservation to prevent the mines employing cheaper black labour?
No - it was not socialist. It was selfish and wrong and did not make economic sense - but it was not socialist.
Now that the problems facing us are so much bigger and we need to think of all South Africans - not just African, or white, or "Coloured", or Asian - the NP has no plan. And now they want to tell us that having a plan is wrong. A plan is not a communist plot - a plan is what you need if you want to build a house, a business, an economy or a country.
The problems that face us are much bigger than those that faced the Afrikaner nationalists in the 1920's, or the 1930's or the 1940's....
But the ANC has the will and the plan to take on these challenges. We are determined and confident about the future because
- we have the support of the people and we believe in our people - we understand the mistakes and the divisions of the past.
The challenges are huge, the tasks are huge, but if we all work together we can build this country to be the country all our forefathers dreamed of.
The only thing to fear is fear itself! We will not let the past stand in our way! We will build a better life for all! The ANC has a plan and the will to make it work.
Our Public Works Programme
The ANC will create 2,5 million jobs in public works alone in the next 5 years.
2,5 million public works jobs will:
With these jobs our people will no longer need to beg, borrow or steal
The NP government is quiet today about its so-called public works programmes. It put aside a measily R2 billion for public works in 1993 and it's bantustan surrogates have also tried. All these failed because of maladministration and lack of credibility amongst the people. Yet they have the cheek to now suggest that putting the people to work for the people is socialist! How did America rebuild itself after the depression? And Germany after WW2?
The ANC government will commit R 5billion to housing alone each year, and mobilise the private sector to do the same. The ANC government will stamp out curruption in the public sector and put the people to work to build a better life for all. The ANC will Promote Small business
NP policies offered nothing to really small business. NP policies protect privilege and can never share privilege.
The ANC government will ensure that even the smallest of entrepreneurs have a chance. The SBDC and other development agencies will be re-organised to provide credit and well-serviced sites. Big business will be encouraged to give small business a chance. But we will go further than simply giving loans. We will:
The ANC will end rural poverty and unemployment Our commitment to a better life for all includes the rural people, the landless, the dispossessed.
Our plan will end rural poverty. stimulate rural development and create rural jobs
The NP government only has the interests of large white farmers at heart:
And of course many a NP member of parliament and cabinet minister is also an absent landowner and benefit directly form these policies!
Now this whole sector is in a mess
The ANC has a plan which will create work for millions and build farming to be a sturdy base for the economy.
ANC Industrial Policy Will create jobs and skills
Only the ANC has the ability and credibility to govern - foreign investors know this. Which is why investors are knocking at our door daily. Which is why we have already been able to conclude a number of agreements with the international business and finance community. We are already setting our economy on a growth path for the first time in 10 years.
This is definitely going to create more jobs in the formal sector.
But an ANC government will not simply let business do what they want. Under NP rule business have also got used to doing things in a particular way - they will have to learn a new way. This is no longer cowboy country. Business will have to learn what social responsibility means.
They will have to learn that to sustain growth, you need to plough profits back into the people.
An ANC Government will build a job-creation focus into all industrial policy and encourage companies to employ as many people as possible. Industry must provide work for women - who, while they are 51% of the population, are only 25% of the workers in formal sector jobs.
And we will not leave it there.
We will ensure that our raw materials are turned into manufactured goods here rather than oversees and that the horrific flight of capital from our country is stopped.
Why should S.A. workers simply take gold out of the ground, while Italian workers turn it into jewellery? Why should our aluminium be exported to build arms in Switzerland or our uranium to bolster Israel's nuclear capacity? Why should our hard-earned money sit in Swiss bank accounts? South Africa needs the jobs and the money.
And we will not stop here.
South African employers, like the NP government, have not shown enough respect for their workers. They have treated them as a cost, like a machines, not as a resource to be developed. As a result there is no respect between workers and their bosses and the relationship breaks down. S.A. bosses must learn that : "A job is only a job if a worker is happy. Otherwise it is simply a slog".
This attitude has resulted in an extreme shortage of skilled labour at all levels, an inability to break through into new inventions and new markets. It has made us losers on the international market.
An ANC government will change this and build pride in work and in our economy.
With business, we will train and educate workers so that they can command better wages and better jobs. If we can achieve these goals we can expand and compete in the world markets and become the engine of Southern Africa. If we succeed, our brothers and sisters in exile from neighbouring countries can also go home!
If we fail, we betray our mission and continue the damage apartheid has done to the whole region.