M Mdladlana: African People Organisation Roundtable Conference

28 August 2006

Programme Director, Dr Dladla,
Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Labour, Ms Rebecca Kasienyane,
Chairperson of the JIPSA Technical Working Group, Mr Gwede Mantashe,
ILO Regional Director, Ms Amri Makhetha,
Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity in
Nigeria, Dr Timiembi Koripano-Agari,
First Secretary of Japan Embassy, Mr Hiroshi Hiraizumi,
The Secretary-General of the Asian Productivity Organisation, Mr Shiego
Takenaka,
Ladies and gentlemen:

Good morning and thank you for coming to share with us your invaluable
experiences on productivity development and enhancement.

Back in August 1998, the Diakonia Council of Churches here in South Africa
organised a workshop on new forms of poverty and marginalisation in the
province of KwaZulu-Natal. The participants who represented 42 organisations
heard harrowing tales of deprivation but also shared stories of survival
against all odds.

Back in 1998, the productivity agenda was launched by heads of the South
Africa’s Development Community (SADC) region, as well as the drive to engender
a consciousness of productivity in Africa by the Pan African Productivity
Association (PAPA).

Back in 1998, the same year I became the Minister of Labour, we saw the
passage of the Skills Development Act and a year later, a Skills Development
Levies Act that had amongst their main objective to improve the skills of the
South African work force to improve work place productivity and to improve the
standard of living of our people.

All these initiatives launched before 1998 and beyond that we have come to
celebrate and once more to reflect upon under the banner of PAPA, are part of
our collective initiatives and interventions to reduce unemployment and poverty
amongst our people. The high levels of poverty are not challenges that are only
echoed in Southern African communities, they affect communities throughout the
rest of Africa and other developing world. They reflect a social system which
has for many years perpetuated gross injustices to fundamental human rights,
the right to work and the right to dignity. As a consequence, these challenges
began to escalate to levels that not only threaten the stability of societies
but also had a potential to erupt into full-blown unrests.

It was heartening to witness within the International Labour Organisation
(ILO) structures, the Governing Body Committee on Freedom of Association,
Ministers reaffirming that and I quote "Opportunities for men and women to
obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity
are essential to ensuring the eradication of hunger and poverty, the
improvement of the economic and social well-being for all, the achievement of
sustained economic growth and sustainable development of all nations and a
fully inclusive and equitable globalisation”.

The United Nations (UN) has also adopted a Ministerial declaration with the
hope that it will help strengthen efforts by the UN and the multilateral system
aimed at creating jobs, reducing poverty and providing new hope for the world's
1,4 billion working poor and youth in particular during the next decade.

In South Africa, youth development has become an integral part of addressing
the challenges of post apartheid South Africa. In devising policies and
programmes for the development of all South Africans we have generated policies
and programmes that aim to provide opportunities for work that is productive
and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection. We
have also attempted to provide our people with better prospects for personal
development and social integration. Our constitution and Labour laws also
provide them with rights to organise and participate in the decisions that
affect their lives and guarantees equality of opportunity and treatment for all
women and men in the work place. In South Africa as part of our “decent work”
agenda, we believe that worker’s rights are human rights. A happy and a skilled
worker is an asset in any organisation that wants to achieve maximum
productivity, growth, best service delivery standards or profits. The opposite
can therefore be also true for a worker who is disgruntled and has inadequate
skills in any work place.

We have also introduced new interventions and approaches in our
learnerships, apprenticeship, internship and bursary programmes for our young
people and I still believe we can do more. We have done all this because at the
core of our concerns is the challenge of creating a solid foundation for a
productive nation. By placing young people and their development in the broader
context of reconstruction and development, common developmental goals and a
spirit of co-operation and co-ordination is encouraged. It is also expected
that by building the productive capacity of our youth, whether through
mentoring or formal training, a spirit of entrepreneurship will flame a vibrant
Small, Medium and Micro Entrepreneurs (SMME) sector.

We host this conference fully cognisant of the challenges we face as
government leaders to uplift the lives of our people and the potential that
productivity has in lifting our people out of the abyss of all the many social
ills.

As government we have set a goal to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014.
To achieve this, we have committed to spend more than R370 billion under the
Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) initiative,
over the next three years towards social and economic massive infrastructure
such as roads, schools and municipal infrastructure. Through this initiative we
are hoping to accelerate the growth of our economy by at least six percent.

To our guest, you may be also aware that we have won the bid to host the
soccer world cup and not Australia as some maverick has suggested. Let me on
the same token also acknowledge that hosting the world cup comes with
challenges as demonstrated in Germany just less than two month ago. However,
our President, has promised the world that South Africa will host one of the
best and first ever soccer spectacular on behalf of the African continent. We
have no doubt that will succeed with the support of our brothers and sisters
across the north of our country.

As a country, we have also identified six major constraints that impact on
our ability to succeed in achieving our goals and my Department is already well
involved on two of these which are:

* shortage of suitably skilled labour and disjointed spatial settlement
patterns
* regulatory environment and burden on small and medium enterprises (SME).

Looking at the strides our nation took and achievements since the advent of
democracy in 1994, we are confident that we will achieve the national goals
that we have set. Within the first decade of our democracy the South African
economy grew by about three percent. Since then it has exceeded four percent
per year, reaching five percent in 2005. Similarly, according to the recent
World Competitiveness Report South African multifactor productivity increased
by a healthy 3,5 percent. I am not suggesting that we remain complacent. We
still have a challenge to translate these productivity gains into more jobs and
improved standard of living for our people.

I hope that this conference will enable us to learn and share in the
productivity gains experienced by most Asian countries, who today, are the
front runners in the world competitiveness stage. Their achievements provide
and inspire us with compelling reasons to follow the same model that has seen a
change in the economies of these countries. It is our belief that in creating
partnerships with our Asian counterparts through sharing of their productivity
experiences, productivity movement in Africa will be enhanced.

I look forward to the PAPA in assisting African countries, under the banner
of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), to focus on
self-sustained development.

Let me also, on behalf of the South African government take this opportunity
to applaud the effort and commitment of the Japanese government in
strengthening productivity organisations in Africa, so that they can play a
leading role in self development effort in our continent.

For South Africa achieving economic efficiency and greater productivity has
acquired a new sense of urgency and my Department in support of the National
Productivity Institution (NPI) has taken on this challenge with renewed vigour
and excitement.

To this end, the NPI under a new brand, Productivity SA, will be embarking
on an aggressive productivity movement which I am hoping will inspire every
South African to become “a proudly South African”.

We are very proud to host you and hope that deliberations in the next four
days will plant a seed in our respective countries for a greater productivity
improvement drive. A vibrant productivity movement is essential for a stable
growth and development of the whole of Africa. Let us join hands in becoming
the champions of productivity.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Labour
28 August 2006