learning to help government achieve Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative
for South Africa (AsgiSA) / Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition's
(JIPSA) goals
1 February 2007
Skilled African language teachers are among the scarce skilled practitioners
identified by Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition.
This is what the Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the gathering
of Council, Staff and students during the official opening of the University of
South Africa's (Unisa) academic year in Tshwane on Thursday, 1 February 2007.
Also present were former Haitian President Jean Aristide and his wife.
"Can you imagine an English child who cannot speak English or a French child
who cannot speak French? Why then do we think it is cute for African children
not to speak, read or write any African language?" asked the Deputy
President.
The Deputy President urged institutions of higher learning to assist in the
acquisition of these identified scarce skills, such as engineering, artisans
and teachers, among others.
She announced that the country needed to produce 50 000 artisans by the year
2010 and to ensure that over 1 000 engineering students graduated from this
2007 onwards.
Government was engaged in finding opportunities for placement of
post-graduate students within and outside the country. This would help in
enriching the calibre of students and graduates the country needed, she
said.
The Deputy President said the Presidential Working Group on Higher Education
had identified some of the knotty challenges confronting tertiary institutions
in South Africa today, including:
* higher education in the context of Africa and the world
* higher education and social cohesion
* the responsiveness and intellectual leadership of the higher education
sector
* and the role of higher education in a developmental state.
The Deputy President said that education was a catalyst of development as it
could break the circle of poverty.
She said poverty does not have to be intergenerational and class hereditary,
and that there is a greater virtue in eliminating poverty rather than just
alleviating it.
She said South Africans needed to create a public environment that was
supportive and proud of its institutions. An affirming culture, promoting
prestige about and respect for Higher Education, bearing in mind that Higher
Education ought to be better governed and managed, and ought to be more
relevant to the societies they sought to serve.
"Nothing short of a skills revolution will make us achieve our goal of
reaching 6% economic growth by 2010. One is never learned as one always
learns," concluded the Deputy President.
For more information please contact:
Thabang Chiloane
Tel: (012) 300 5311
Cell: 082 888 8783
Issued by: The Presidency
1 February 2007
Source: SAPA
