P Mlambo-Ngcuka: North West Legislature

17 March 2006

The Premier of North West, Edna Molewa,
The Speaker of the North West Provincial Legislature,
Thandi Modise,
Members of the Executive Council,
Members of the Provincial Legislature,
Our honoured traditional leaders,
Leaders of faith based organisations,
Mayors and councillors,
Members of the business community,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Ba gaetsho dumelang!

I am deeply honoured by your invitation to address members of the North West
Legislature and to get an opportunity to interact with members of this house.
This is particularly so since our country has recently held its Local
Government Elections and our people once more exercised their right to vote and
in most cases renewed the democratic mandate to the ruling party.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate all the political parties
that participated in the local government elections. Both the national and
provincial government have the responsibility to give the maximum support to
new councillors to ensure that they are able to discharge their
responsibilities of ensuring efficient services delivery and a better life for
our people at local level.

I would like to further take this opportunity to congratulate Presley
Chweneyagae from Mafikeng in the North West a lead actor in Tsotsi, a South
African made film for achieving yet another first for South Africa, by becoming
the first South African film to win an Oscar under the category of Best Foreign
Language Film. This film and its whole cast has made South Africa proud and are
a true embodiment of the spirit of the ‘age of hope.’

The North West Province is predominantly rural and characterised by high
levels of poverty and unemployment as well as low literacy levels. About 800
000 people are on social grants. Yet it is a province with many
possibilities.

The efforts made in this province to create an attractive economic climate
must be commended.

As you are aware, North West Province is a medium sized province relative to
others in the country. With an annual production worth around R28 billion the
economy of the North West is about twice the size of neighbouring Botswana and
about the size of the Kenyan economy. The single most important industry in the
North West is mining (contributing 42 percent to GGP), followed by agriculture
with 13 percent and manufacturing 12 percent.

This province currently accounts for approximately 72 percent of the
country’s total PGM sales and produces more PGMs than any other single area in
the world. The challenge is to encourage more mineral beneficiation in all the
minerals that occur in this province and for the benefits to accrue also to the
people of the North West.

In addition from mining, agriculture is the only sector in which North West
Province is acknowledged to have comparative advantage over any other
provinces.

Tourism and manufacturing sectors are growing in importance in terms of
their contribution to GGP growth and need to be given support.

The province is a classical case why we need not only to accelerate but also
to entrench sharing of growth.

Government adopted the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South
Africa (AsgiSA) to co-ordinate and mobilise national efforts, meaning all South
Africans towards growing the economy at an average rate of 4,5 percent between
2005 and 2009 and then an average rate of six percent between 2010 and 2014.
AsgiSA forms part of South Africa’s response intervention to halving poverty,
underdevelopment and unemployment by 2014 as part of its target of realising
the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG), which are set for
2015.

United Nations Secretary-General Koffi Annan, in his recent address to the
joint sitting of Parliament, highlighted that Africa is the only continent that
is note expected to meet the UNMDG. In South Africa, we want to meet these
goals by 2014 and I would urge that the North West Province should aim to
achieve these goals even much earlier given that it is well endowed with
resources, which we need to develop for the benefit of most people. The growth
of North West must be shared not just accelerated. That is why we have adopted
a programme to that effect.

Why AsgiSA?

The aim of AsgiSA is:

* To remove constraints to growth that is shared
* To achieve sustainable growth that is shared by most South Africans (mass
impact)
* Linkages between first and Second Economy (systematic and
programmatically)
* Identify new areas of growth, taking advantage of possibilities created in
the last 11 years of stable ANC rule
* Unlock potential of women and youth in particular

AsgiSA interventions:

* Infrastructure programmes
* Sector investment strategies
* Education and skills
* Second Economy & small, medium and micro enterprise (SMME)
interventions
* Macro-economic issues
* Public administration issues/delivery

Further allocations are envisaged going forward:

Generally 50 percent to be spent by the three spheres of government; 40
percent to be spent by State owned enterprises. Five percent to be spent
through public private partnerships. Three – five percent to be spent by
development finance institutions.

Provincial projects:

* Eastern Cape (EC) – Umzimvubu water catchment and timber industries
* Northern Cape (NC) – Beneficiation encompassing e.g. Diamond, gemstone and
jewellery making and training
* Northern Cape (NC) - SKA
* Northern Cape - Kalahari goat kid
• KwaZulu Natal (KZN), Northern Cape (NC), Free State (FS), Eastern Cape (EC),
Mpumalanga (Mpu), North West (NW) – National bio-fuels; sugar, soya, cassava,
maize
* Limpopo – Dilokong Platinum Corridor - dam, road & railway linkage
* Gauteng – JIA Logistics hub / IDZ
* KZN – Makhathini Cassava & Sugar
* NW – Western Frontier Cattle Beneficiation
* WC – N2 gateway, housing, local economic development (LED) and
infrastructure
* Mpu – Moloto Highway Road & Rail

Sector strategies (industrial strategies):

* Focus on sectors with potential for high growth, employment creation and
enterprise development
* Immediate focus on BPO and Tourism (strategies are essentially
complete)
* Focus on agriculture/agro-processing for next set of initiatives: biofuels,
timber, food production and processing
* Other sectors include: chemicals; metals beneficiation (including capital
goods); creative industries; clothing and textiles; durable consumer
goods
* This will still benefit from evolving industrial strategy

Education and skills development:

• Interventions in quality of general education: quality education
development and upliftment programme (QIDSUP); maths & science (Dinaledi
schools); stronger career guidance programmes
* Strengthening of Further Education and Training (FET) system: R1.9 billion
injection over next three years
* Much strengthened adult basic education and training (ABET) programme
* Next phase of national skills development strategy: better targeting on
skills needs
* Joint initiative for priority skills acquisition

Second Economy interventions

* Expansion of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP): bigger rural road
projects; focus on maintenance; roll out of early childhood development
component
* Strengthening of start up and microfinance initiatives especially loans
between R10 000 and R250 000 and those below R10 000
* Targeted initiatives for women and youths e.g. unemployed graduates
* All sector strategies must have developmental elements
* Regulatory environment for SMMEs
* Market access and product development
* Realisation of dead assets e.g. livestock, township houses, land etc

Second Economy focus areas:

* Coops a programme based in Independent Development Trust (IDT) is being
developed
* Housing related problems missing stock and financing matters’ between R50 000
and R500 000
* Youth national service encompassing:
- Service,
- Skilling,
- Citizenship/patriotism

* Land reform and productive use of land
* Local economic development
*Governance and institutional issues especially local government delivery

Key for AsgiSA is:

* Universal access to basic services: water, sanitation and
electricity.
* Human resource is crucial for strengthening capacity to deliver development
Bank of South Africa (DBSA) is working on deployment of skills especially
project managers to local authorities.
* A follow up to project consolidated and Imbizos.
* This initiative is linked to mentoring of young professionals by experienced
technical experts; especially engineers.
* Encouraging nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), community based
organisations (CBOs) and social entrepreneurship to promote participation and
engage in social mobilisation
* General improved service delivery including spending capacity and improve on
local economic development (LED).

Honourable members and madam speaker this is doable. We need the will and
vigilance. We need to cooperate with all tiers of government; with private
sector and Department of Labour.

In the context of the programme we have elaborated, it is vital that the
provincial legislature plays its crucial oversight role in ensuring a
successful implementation of this programme and to assist implementation. This
is the ‘age of hope’ but we must make hope for poor people. So much is in
place.

It is also important that the legislatures play a key role in assisting the
new councils to function efficiently and improve on the delivery of basic
services to our people.

It is the duty of members of parliament to ensure that the public is kept
informed about what government is doing and aware how government programmes can
assist them. Let us build a people’s parliament that will be an instrument in
building a better life for the people of this province. We must go out and
tell; go out and serve.

As you are aware the country is facing a challenge in the power generating
sector but as the Minister of Public Enterprise indicated, we do not have a
crisis of power shortage but a challenge in reduced reserve capacity.

I wish to urge members of this house and all South Africans to join the
campaign for more efficient use of our energy sources.

By each of us doing our bit in energy efficiency, we can make a significant
contribution.

Madam Speaker, we firmly believe that we have built a basis for a National
Programme of Shared Economic Growth (NPSEG).

With this programme, we can achieve our social objectives and we can more
than meet the millennium goals.

Our second decade of freedom will be the decade in which we radically reduce
in equality and virtually eliminate extreme poverty.

We know now that we can do it, working together around an initiative which
has a support of the nation.

Today is better that yesterday, tomorrow will be better than tomorrow.

I thank you.

Issued by: The Presidency
17 March 2006