Programme Director;
The Premier of Mpumalanga, Honourable Mandla Ndlovu;
Deputy Ministers of Higher Education and Training, Honourable Dr Nomusa Dube-Ncube and Honourable Yusuf Cassim;
The Executive Mayor of Nkangala District Municipality, Councillor Thomas Ngwenya;
The Executive Mayors of Emalahleni and Steve Tshwete Local Municipalities, Councillors Vusi Nhlapho and Petros Masilela;
Members of the Executive Council and Mayoral Committees present;
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and Heads of Mission;
The Director-General of Higher Education and Training, Dr Nkosinathi Sishi, and Directors-General and senior officials of the Office of the Premier and of national departments;
Municipal Managers of Nkangala, Emalahleni and Steve Tshwete;
The Principal of Nkangala TVET College, Mr Maimela;
Representatives of the Presidency and the JET Project Management Unit;
Leaders of our SETAs, public entities, universities and colleges;
Representatives of business, organised labour, development partners and community organisations;
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning.
The title I have been given this morning is “From National JET Skills Policy to Place-Based Implementation”. It is a good title, because it names our problem honestly. South Africa does not lack skills policy. We have plans, frameworks, councils and funds. What we have too often lacked is the ability to turn national intent into something that a young person in Emalahleni, or a worker in Middelburg, can actually feel.
That is what today is about. We are launching the Mpumalanga Skills Development Zone, the first of three Skills Development Zones under the national Just Energy Transition Skills Portfolio. In a few minutes the Premier, the Executive Mayor of Nkangala and I will sign a Joint Declaration of Commitment. Before we put pen to paper, I want to be clear about what that signature commits us to.
Mpumalanga has powered this country for generations. Its coal mines, power stations, factories and transport routes have kept the lights on in homes and kept industries running across South Africa. We must acknowledge that contribution, and not as a courtesy. The transition will be judged by how it treats the people and communities who made it possible.
This province is changing. Power stations are reaching the end of their working lives. Investment is shifting. The occupations employers need are changing. Some workers will need to update their qualifications. Others will need to move into new occupations altogether. And young people entering the labour market need training that reflects the industries of today and the opportunities of tomorrow.
Let me address directly a question that many people in this room are asking. Is the transition moving too fast? It is a fair question, particularly when our institutions have not always kept pace. My answer is this: the remedy for slow institutions is not to slow the transition. It is to sequence it intelligently, and to build skills ahead of investment rather than after the jobs have gone.
Existing industries, from mining to electricity generation to petrochemicals, remain major employers in this province, and they will need skilled workers for years to come. A just transition is not a cliff edge. It involves different pathways for different workers, enterprises and communities, and our skills response must reflect that reality.
That is why we begin here. Nkangala District Municipality is the initial anchor locality for the Zone, with Emalahleni and Steve Tshwete Local Municipalities participating in the first phase of implementation. Nkangala TVET College is the anchor education and training institution. This brings skills development close to an established centre of energy production, mining and manufacturing, where the opportunities and the risks of the transition are most real.
I thank the Premier, the Executive Mayors and the Municipal Managers for their leadership in bringing us here. Municipalities are not spectators in this work. Skills development must be tied to local economic development plans, infrastructure investment, municipal services and small enterprise development, and municipalities are best placed to convene that.
So what exactly are we launching?
The Skills Development Zone is not a new college, a new government department or another stand-alone training project. It is a place-based mechanism for coordinating the institutions, investments and interventions that already exist, around the economic needs of a defined locality.
We are not short of institutions. TVET colleges provide occupational and technical training. Universities produce advanced skills, research and innovation. SETAs plan for their sectors and fund training. Employers provide workplaces and industry expertise. Municipalities understand local priorities. The problem is that these contributions too often run in parallel rather than together. The Zone exists to bring them together, guided by credible evidence of what the local economy needs.
In practical terms, the Zone must do five things. It must identify the occupations and competencies that existing and emerging industries require. It must test honestly whether our institutions have the programmes, lecturers, workshops and equipment to produce those skills. It must open more workplaces for apprenticeships, learnerships and internships. It must give workers whose industries are changing a route to reskilling, including formal recognition of the skills they have built over years of work. And it must create room for local entrepreneurs and small businesses in the new value chains.
The success of this Zone will not be measured by today’s ceremony. It will be measured by what changes in people’s lives: better access to relevant training, more workplace experience, stronger institutions, and more local people participating in the economy around them.
The Zone is also the point where our national work meets the ground.
In August last year we launched the JET Skills Desk, located in the Office of the Director-General, and the National JET Skills Advisory Forum, housed within the Human Resource Development Council. Alongside them, we are organising sectoral workstreams on clean energy, green hydrogen and new energy vehicles.
Each level has a distinct job. The national level provides direction, coordination and a common way of measuring progress. The sectoral workstreams provide evidence on occupational demand and changing technology. The Skills Development Zones translate that into programmes that respond to conditions in a particular place. I expect the JET Skills Desk, working with the Department’s branches, the Advisory Forum, the provincial government and our partners, to make these levels function as one system, without duplication, without fragmentation, and with clarity on who is delivering what, with which money, and how we will know.
The President has called for a Skills Revolution. This is what that revolution must look like in a specific place: institutions, employers and communities organised around real opportunities, rather than programmes designed far away and delivered in hope.
Programme Director, a word on our institutions.
Nkangala TVET College now carries an important responsibility as the anchor institution. It will convene education and training partners, identify capacity gaps and help shape programmes around regional priorities. I want to thank Principal Maimela and the College leadership for accepting that responsibility.
But this cannot rest on one college. The University of Mpumalanga and our other universities have a role to play in research, in the formation of engineers and technical professionals, and in the specialised training that the new energy economy requires.
And I want to be specific about our Community Education and Training colleges. In the mining and power station towns of this district, many of the adults most affected by the transition will not walk into a TVET workshop or a university lecture hall. They will walk into a community learning centre. That is where adult education, foundational and digital skills, career guidance and community mobilisation can happen. If this Zone leaves out our CET colleges, it will miss the very people the word “just” was meant to protect. I therefore expect the Education and Training Institutions Forum to include CET colleges from the start.
To our SETAs, I want to be candid. Our own JET reporting has acknowledged limited capacity in the JET Skills Desk, the SETAs and the TVET colleges to drive implementation at scale. I say this not to embarrass anyone, but because a plan that assumes capacity we do not have is not a plan. I am asking our SETAs, including those represented here today, to reflect JET priorities in their sector skills plans, annual performance plans and budgets, and then to fund delivery inside the Zones: occupational programmes, Centres of Specialisation, workshops and equipment, lecturer development, workplace learning and recognition of prior learning. Where new Centres of Specialisation are needed to serve identified value chains, we must find the means to establish them.
Honourable Premier, skills cannot be planned in isolation from investment.
The Zone must stay close to provincial and municipal economic planning, and it must engage directly with companies in mining, energy, manufacturing, construction and transport. It must identify the opportunities in renewable energy, electricity infrastructure, energy storage and industrial diversification, and the services that support them.
We are working with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition to connect Skills Development Zones with Special Economic Zones. Where government is attracting investment, skills planning must start early enough that the workforce is ready when the investment arrives, and not two years later.
There are also opportunities closer to home. We are exploring with other departments how the installation and maintenance of solar systems in government-built houses could provide practical training, workplace experience and enterprise opportunities for local people. Initiatives of this kind connect skills to infrastructure, to energy access and to local livelihoods, and we should test them here.
I thank our partners: Eskom, whose experience and training infrastructure are central to this work; the National Business Initiative; GIZ, through the Career Path Development for Employment programme; Wits REAL, which is developing the National JET-Integrated Skills Plan and the Mpumalanga Regional Skills Plan; the French Development Agency; and the European Union. Your Excellencies, thank you for your countries’ support. The Director-General and this afternoon’s partnership panel will set out this work in more detail. I will make one point only: the Regional Skills Plan must guide real investment and implementation decisions. It must not become another document on a shelf.
The word “just” in Just Energy Transition must have practical meaning. It asks who gets access to opportunity, who carries the greatest risk, and whose voice shapes the decisions.
In Mpumalanga that begins with workers whose livelihoods are tied to coal and electricity. Their skills and experience must be recognised, and they must have real routes to new work where it is needed. It includes the young people who are not in employment, education or training, who need to be connected to career information, occupational programmes and workplace experience.
It includes women, who still face barriers in technical occupations in energy, engineering and manufacturing. Initiatives such as Girls’ Day, which we are exploring with GIZ, help widen young women’s ambitions. But inclusion must go beyond awareness campaigns. It must show up in programme design, recruitment, funding decisions, workplace placements and the indicators we use to judge ourselves. The same applies to persons with disabilities. And communities must have a direct say in what is done in their name.
Finally, this Zone has to last beyond today.
On governance: the Department will work with the Office of the Premier to coordinate across provincial departments, municipalities and stakeholders. The work of the Zone must report into the Provincial Human Resource Development Council and the Provincial Skills Development Forums, so that it is aligned with provincial priorities and reviewed through structures that already exist. I expect those reporting arrangements to be put in place.
On financing: a sustainable Zone cannot depend indefinitely on short-term projects. We must align public funds, SETA resources, employer investment and development partner contributions around agreed regional priorities. The South Africa–European Union Dialogue Facility project on a sustainable financing and governance architecture for workforce transition gives us an opportunity to work this through properly.
On accountability: we must be able to show what has been achieved with the resources committed, including programmes delivered, institutional capacity built, workplace opportunities created, participation by priority groups, and the contribution to employment and enterprise.
Mpumalanga is the first of three Zones. The Northern Cape, focused on green hydrogen, and the Eastern Cape, focused on new energy vehicles, are to follow. What we learn here on governance, partnership, financing and community participation must be documented and used. But we must not assume that what works in Nkangala can simply be copied to Upington or Gqeberha. Each Zone must be shaped by its own economy.
Programme Director, I want to place six expectations on record.
First, the Zone must be guided by a clear regional skills agenda, built on credible evidence and aligned with provincial and local economic priorities.
Second, our colleges, universities and CET colleges must be equipped to respond to the occupations and technologies that the region requires.
Third, employers must be active partners in programme design, practical training and workplace-based learning.
Fourth, workers affected by change, unemployed young people, women, persons with disabilities and affected communities must be deliberately included and visibly counted.
Fifth, every participating institution and partner must agree on practical responsibilities, resource commitments and measurable deliverables.
Sixth, we must put in place the arrangements to monitor progress, learn from implementation and sustain this work over time.
These are the commitments behind the Declaration we are about to sign. I invite the people of Mpumalanga to hold us to them.
I thank you.
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