Mlambo-Ngcuka, at the Fundraising Gala Dinner of the Community Plough Back
Movement (CPBM) at the Civic Centre, Cape Town
12 April 2006
Mayor of Cape Town, Hellen Zille,
MEC for Education, Cameron Dugmore,
MEC for Sport and Cultural Affairs, PM Jacobs,
Chairperson of CPBM, Professor Nomvula Mtetwa,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a pleasure and a privilege to be with you tonight at this splendid
gala dinner organised by the Community Plough Back Movement (CPBM). This event
plays an important role in our communities in fostering the spirit of Batho
Pele and Vuk'uzenzele.
There is an African saying among the Nguni and Sotho speaking people which
says "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" or "Motho ke motho kabatho". When directly
translated into English it means that "A person is a person because of other
people". But, I believe this saying is deeper and more profound than that.
It tells us of the interconnectedness and dependency of people towards each
other. This saying instructs us that our existence is dependent upon other
people. Our successes are due to the role that our communities have played in
nurturing and developing us. It speaks about the need for us to have a sense of
community spirit as people. It says community members must play a constructive
role towards the development of their communities. It also tells us about the
need to give back to our communities what they have given us.
Firmly embedded in this saying is an injunction that, without the support of
other people, our existence is meaningless. It instructs us that we have a
central role to play in the empowerment of our communities, who are mostly poor
and destitute.
Our country's past and the history of dispossession and neglect that took
place under apartheid means that most communities today still find themselves
at the receiving end, are afflicted by poverty, want and unemployment. As
people who come from previously disadvantaged backgrounds there is a need for
us to rekindle the spirit of self reliance, self help, and community
involvement in order to deal with the eradication of the legacy of
apartheid.
This gala dinner is a reminder to all of us, as members of different
communities, that most of us are the products of our own communities; and that
we are what we are today because of those communities
I am therefore happy to attend an event of this nature, which seeks to
ensure that those people who have made it and are successful in their various
fields and professions can contribute to the development of the communities
they come from.
This function tonight also reminds us of what many poor African communities
across the continent have been engaged in through efforts like the "Harambee
projects" that were developed in countries like Kenya where the people are
engaged in similar projects of "pulling together" and uniting in order to raise
funds to be used in community development projects.
The main aim of the "Harambee projects" is to create significant and
sustainable improvements in the levels of both educational opportunity and
achievement so as to provide increased access to economic self-advancement by
impoverished rural communities - where they provide and maintain physical
infrastructure for schools, provide educational materials for schools, improve
the ability of schools and communities to maximise their available resources
through greater efficiency, co-operation and communication, and to make this
process sustainable.
In Kenya such a project draws money from outside sources, relying on foreign
donors, whereas with our similar actions, including what we are doing here
through the Community Plough Back Movement, is that we look for the funds
internally, from our own people. We also believe that it is not only funds that
we are looking. We also want to tap into the skills, expertise and other
resources at our disposal, which puts our chances of success at an
advantage.
Professor Mtetwa, we are therefore glad when members of the community are
seen taking up the gauntlet and doing something to ensure that the most
desperate, the most needy, are given an opportunity to rise out of their
unfortunate circumstances, through the efforts of the Community Plough Back
Movement. Those who have a certain level of education, skills and resources can
use those in the betterment of the lives of the majority of the people as a
whole. This is in line, as well, with the promotion of our African heritage of
people caring for each other; it shows that indeed we are what we are because
of other people.
When the President opened Parliament this year he correctly characterised
our age as being the "Age of Hope". In that declaration the President was
making a call on all of us to play our meaningful role towards making that age
of hope a reality. We must give meaning to what the President was saying from
the point of view of government. We have different initiatives running in South
Africa, and indeed need more, to make sure that we live up to that
injunction.
We must try to ensure that our youth in particular are looked after and
their conditions changed for the better. It is because of this that on 16 June
this year we will be re-launching the National Youth Service Programme in order
to deal with challenges that face our young people.
The National Youth Service Programme (NYSP) is a Special Presidential
Programme, mandated to facilitate the implementation of National Youth Service
in South Africa. The objective of the NYSP is to involve young people in
community service to help build a nation and, at the same time, acquire skills
that enhance their career opportunities.
In his 2006 State of the Nation Address, President Mbeki announced that
"Among other things during the next financial year we will enrol at least 10
000 young people in the National Youth Service Programme and enrol 5 000
volunteers to act as mentors to vulnerable children."
This programme is part of the myriad responses to the challenge of youth
development. In addition to the volunteer-based youth service initiative, we
are accelerating the implementation of employment-based youth service in order
to impact on the rate of unemployment among youth.
Among the people we target to participate in this programme are tertiary
students, who should also be part of our home-grown Harambee initiatives.
Students will benefit by doing community service (and in turn benefit their
communities) in that they will gain work experience, which will enhance their
chances of finding work when they graduate.
In practical terms we want students to go back to their communities and
start volunteering their time and skills to improve the lives of the poor and
vulnerable in their communities.
For instance there is no reason that stops young people who are studying
agriculture from going to rural communities to plough back their skills in the
form of helping small crop farmers by teaching them about crop rotation, animal
care and water harvesting.
There is nothing stopping those students doing accounting from helping
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) existing in their communities with
accounting skills or helping spaza shop owners in financial management and
accounting skills, so that their businesses can grow.
We want students who are studying town planning to assist in their
municipalities or in rural municipalities with their skills and knowledge for
the benefit of those rural municipalities. They should share knowledge on human
settlement planning and integrated development planning.
The Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) has
as its central pillar an objective of developing our economy by 6% in order to
halve the rate of unemployment and poverty.
For this to happen we will need to develop the skills level and capacity of
our people so that they can acquire skills that will help our economy to
achieve the growth rate we require.
One of the interventions of AsgiSA is around the issue of skills
development, hence we have launched the Joint Initiatives on Priority Skills
Acquisition (JIPSA) which will look specifically at developing scarce and
priority skills. I believe that our JIPSA ties in perfectly with the objectives
of your organisation of trying "to deal with disintegration of our communities,
especially around the education system and the general moral degeneration".
When we were consulting around AsgiSA the youth sector agreed with
government that Business Process Outsourcing, Bio-Fuels, Agro-processing,
Tourism and Minerals Beneficiation have enormous opportunities for young South
Africans. In the short, medium and long terms, we will be keeping track of, and
increasing, the number of people benefiting from these opportunities.
It raises our hopes, therefore, to note that the Community Plough Back
Movement will also deal with issues of youth empowerment and capacity building.
The wealth of experience that lies among your board of directors is encouraging
and we hope you will play a meaningful role in helping us to develop the scarce
skills we are talking about.
We hope that what this organisation is doing here today will be emulated all
over the country and we will see a rise of community organisations infused with
the same spirit of vukâuzenzele, letsema, and Batho Pele. We hope this effort
will inspire among our people the new patriotism that our country so greatly
needs.
Our objective is to ensure that development taking place in our country
should be based on a strong partnership between all sectors of our society,
which includes all components of the private-public partnerships. It should be
based on strong community participation; there must be strategic interventions
geared towards ensuring that we meet these goals.
We look forward to working closely with you, particularly around JIPSA where
we have a common interest in developing the skills capacity and entrepreneurial
skills of our young people. It is only when we work together with a common
direction - "united in our diversity", as the Preamble to our Constitution puts
it so aptly -that we can really deal with the challenges that face our
country.
Let us vigorously press ahead in this cause, inspired by efforts such as
those which we salute on this occasion.
I thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
13 April 2006
Source: SAPA
