Issued by African National Congress - Parliament
17 February 2003
Madame Speaker
Honourable Members
Mister President, you started your State of the Nation address on Friday by reflecting on the dramatic events of ten years ago and by paying a tribute to the truly great people who helped bring us to where we are today. While you were talking I had an overwhelming sense of what an immense privilege it is to be able to serve our country the way we are, and to be sitting in this Chamber. How many of us would ever have imagined, ten years ago, that we would be sitting here today?
We remember the conversations we had just a few years earlier, in our prison cells, in exile, or late at night in safe houses - our yearning to return home; our yearning for freedom; nostalgic reminiscence of our beautiful country. We often spoke about what we would do one day when our country is finally liberated. We spoke about wanting to be teachers or lecturers one day, or nurses or doctors, or lawyers, or journalists. Some wanted to serve in the new Defence Force, or the Police Force, and some, like myself, even wanted to go back to farming one day.
But I don't recall a single person saying that what they really wanted was to be a Member of Parliament one day. Yet here we are, ten years later, and it presents us with a unique opportunity to take the struggle for a better life for all a few steps further every day of our lives.
We fought to end racist minority rule and we won that fight. But we cannot rest until we have won the fight to end the poverty that remains with us.
We should not deceive ourselves (and the public) by pretending that there are simple solutions. There is no such thing. While ideas such as the introduction of a basic income grant deserve careful consideration and should not simply be dismissed, to suggest that all the country is waiting for is for the President to announce a few simple measures, such as this grant, is oversimplifying a complex challenge, and is in fact misleading. On its own it could not possibly eradicate poverty in our country.
What is clearly needed is a set of measures that are developmental in their nature, that address real and immediate needs, that are complimentary and sustainable in their conceptualization and in practice.
Your speech, Mr President, was not a populist pronouncement, however tempting it may be to do so in the run up to an election. The goals and ideals that we fought for were not about winning elections. They are about creating a better life for all our people, and in particular for the poor. Your address gives us a framework that can help us achieve our aims of pushing back the frontiers of poverty.
I would like to pick up on a few points that could result in job creation on a significant scale and could go a long way towards reducing poverty if properly implemented. The first point is your announcement on the expansion of services to our people, and in particular the progressive extension of the child support grant to cover children up to the age of 14. Of course this is not the long term answer to all the challenges facing us, but it will bring welcome relief to many, and will help support those who simply cannot find work, or whom we will not be able to reach in the short term, with the best will in the world, through increased investment and our job creating efforts.
When you say that the government must act to ensure that we reduce the number of people dependant on social welfare, surely all people serious about finding solutions must agree with you.
The reduction of dependency on grants means the creation of jobs, and this will require a monumental effort from all levels of government, from business and from labour, with well thought out interventions. Economic growth on its own will not be enough. The Growth and Development Summit offers an important opportunity for the emergence of creative ideas and a commitment from all stakeholders to collective action. The Summit comes at a critical time in our country - a time when we have opportunities such as we have never had before. Our macroeconomic policies are bearing fruit: the Rand is performing extremely well; inflation is coming down; growth forecasts are good; revenue collection is steadily improving; our deficit has been reduced and our foreign reserves are healthy.
But the poor remain poor, and were hard hit by last year's food price increases, and unemployment remains at an unacceptably high level. The opportunities that a relatively strong economy offers us cannot be lost. The Summit cannot just be a consensus-seeking exercise. The challenges of poverty eradication and job creation will have to be tackled head on. You have presented us with a comprehensive set of measures to start dealing with these challenges, comrade President, but implementation strategies no doubt still need further attention; new creative ideas need to be explored and above all, the Summit must emerge with a genuine commitment to effective collective action to address these challenges.
One important part of a comprehensive set of interventions will have to be the expanded public works programme that you referred to. We need a massively expanded public works programme, but one that goes much further than simply a number of projects run by some government departments. Principles of labour-intensity need to be embraced and applied to all our road building, our construction of airports and harbours and the maintenance of public facilities.
An initiative of the MEC for Health in the Gauteng province offers us a good example: the curtains in public hospitals for which she is responsible were old and needed to be replaced. She used this opportunity to create jobs by awarding the contract to unemployed women, who were assisted with sewing machines and given the necessary training. They are now examining how the training they have received and the skills acquired can lead to permanent employment.
The Working for Water project employed 42 000 people at its peak, and did immensely valuable work in removing alien species, especially from our water-catchment areas. The programme has barely scratched the surface in removing alien vegetation, but it has not grown over the last few years. And yet it provides benefits to the poor over and above employment by restoring the productive capacity of land, increasing water availability and even making communities safer against the threat of runaway fires.
Every municipality has its standard waste management function, and refuse is collected and disposed of. But meanwhile there are areas that they simply cannot seem to be able clean up with their regular municipal staff. We have all seen areas in our townships and informal settlements that have years' worth of litter lying there, posing a health hazard and undignified living conditions. Some municipalities have introduced clean-up projects for the unemployed, but not all. These activities have positive spin-offs - a cleaner country becomes more attractive to tourists, and increased tourism creates jobs.
The local shopping center, close to where I live, is always spotlessly clean. But outside there are not enough rubbish bins, drains are clogged up with plastic bags and tins and there is a lot of litter. Why can't the Pick&Pays and Shoprites and Spars have national programmes to clean up the areas around their shopping centers?
We need to think of creative ideas to encourage all businesses country wide to employ more people. We could possibly have a national programme of support to businesses who employ people from registered lists to do work that is additional to their normal operational requirements, with the government and the firm each paying fifty percent of the salary, with the firm taking management responsibility, thus overcoming possible capacity limitations of government. We could have a massive country clean up, or alien species removal happening on a much greater scale, with private nature reserve involvement, for example. Groups of farmers may club together to fix up the access roads that they use, because it will be in their interest to do so.
Madame Speaker, these are not ideas that come from the National Conference of the ANC. I would be the first to admit that they need much more thought and there are no doubt many far better proposals. I am airing a few ideas to make a point, and the point is that we need people to come up with ideas. We need creative thinking. The State of the Nation Address presents us with a carefully considered and comprehensive framework, but it allows for an infinite number of ideas and initiatives. Determination and commitment to make this country of ours a better place for everyone is what is needed.
An expanded public works programme, with all the potential it has to create jobs, will not be enough. The economy will have to continue to grow, that much we all know. Every economist in the country will concede that we have done extraordinarily well on this front.
But we also all know that even this is not enough. We need to pay special attention to certain sectors of our economy that have great livelihood enhancing and employment-creating potential, but are struggling with a range of disadvantages and constraints.
In particular I am referring to small businesses. We have thousands of them in every city; in the townships and in informal settlements - the man who cuts your hair on the street corner; the woman selling fresh produce on the pavement; the back street panel beater and the builder who is skilled but cannot obtain finance to buy himself a bakkie or a ladder.
Stimulating this sector of the economy will result in reduced dependency on grants; will make our economy more competitive; will benefit consumers; will enhance household livelihoods and will result in jobs that are not government provided. The potential benefits to society are huge. The real question is: what do you do to support this sector and where do you begin? Again, no easy answers, but there at least some things that can be done that will make a difference:
Mister President, you referred to the establishment of an Apex Fund to provide micro-credit to people at the grassroots level. This is another welcome announcement. As we all know, the devil lies in the detail, and the fund will only assume real value once it translates into access to loans to poor people and small businesses even without collateral. The discussions with institutions active in this field should happen as a matter of great urgency. The extent to which access to finance can assist in stimulating economic activity should not be underestimated. It would be useful to include NGOs who have experience in this field in these discussions.
If you have time you might even consult with your wife who feels passionately about micro-credit, and has gained insights and experience through her work in this field.
There is so much to be said, and so much to be done, and so little time. I am confident that we are all going to roll up our sleeves this year in united action to roll back the frontiers of poverty.