occasion of the Budget vote of The Presidency: National Assembly
12 June 2007
Madam Speaker and Deputy Speaker,
Hon Deputy President,
Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Honourable Members,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Thank you very much for affording us the opportunity to address the National
Assembly as it considers the Budget of the Presidency. The Deputy President
will address the House on the important areas that she deals with, including
matters such as her role as the Leader of Government Business, the Moral
Regeneration campaign, the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for South
Africa (AsgiSA), the South African National AIDS Council and others, while the
Minister in the Presidency will speak on issues of gender, children,
disability, youth and other matters.
As the House is aware, in four days' time we will commemorate Youth Day and
once more reflect on the challenges facing our youth today. This occasion will
assume particular significance because three months from today will be the 30th
anniversary of the death of one of South Africa's young heroes who at the age
of 30 years was callously killed by the apartheid security police, thus denying
our country the possibility further to benefit from the enormous talent which
Steve Bantu Biko demonstrated during the short years of his life.
A month after Steve Biko was killed, on the 19th of October 1977, in an
extensive state security crackdown targeting individuals, organisations and the
media, a variety of publications were banned in a futile attempt to silence the
voice of the masses of our people who demanded collectively that, 'The People
Shall Govern!'
Recognising that we have broken with that past, and confident that our
democracy fully guarantees freedom of expression, last week the World
Association of Newspapers held its Summit Meeting here in Cape Town, meeting in
Africa for the first time in its 60-year existence.
Madame Speaker:
Because the role of the Presidency is to provide leadership as well as
coordinate, monitor and evaluate the work of government, we have, in the
previous Budget Votes of the Presidency spoken about whether the democratic
State has the required capacity to discharge its Constitutional mandate of
transforming our society and ensuring that there exist the necessary tools to
help achieve the objective for which many of our heroes and heroines sacrificed
their lives, which is the attainment of a better life for all.
During the presentation of their Budgets, a number of our Ministers
correctly referred to the fact that we remain committed to building a
developmental state. It is in this context that we must understand the work of
the Presidency.
Specifically with regard to the issue of the developmental state, the Hon
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said in her Budget Speech on the 5th of June:
"In any developing society government machinery is critical in delivering
public services and creating an environment in which other societal forces such
as business and community can flourish in their own right. In 2005, the World
Bank, in its report titled Capacity Building in Africa, underscored the
importance of the public sector for a developmental and anti-poverty
approachâ¦
"The State is heavily reliant on the strength and capability of the system
of government successfully to implement the range of programmes designed to
respond to the developmental challenges we are facing. Excellence in
performance across and within the three spheres (of government), underpinned by
the availability of capacity (skills, human capital resources and systems),
attracting and retaining the right capacity, its location and optimal use as
well as maintaining an ethos of service become of central concern and
importance."
In our presentations to the House on behalf of the Presidency, normally we
do not report on our interactions with the individual Ministries. However, to
underline the critical developmental role of the state, I would like to draw
the attention of the Hon Members to two areas that are of vital importance to
our future.
I refer here to the preparations being made by the State Owned Enterprises,
under the leadership of the Ministry of Public Enterprises, to respond to what
the Hon Alec Erwin referred to as "the rapid increase in global demand for
capital goods (which) is resulting in supply constraints." As the Hon Minister
indicated, "Through the competitive supplier development programme (CSDP) we
aim to facilitate the development of South Africa's manufacturing sector and
relieve these supply constraintsâ¦by developing local capacity" in the
production of capital goods. The importance of this in developing our
manufacturing sector and our economy as a whole cannot be overemphasised.
I would also like to refer to the important work being done by our Science
Councils and science institutions, under the leadership of the Ministry of
Science and Technology, together with the Universities and the private sector,
radically to improve our performance as a country in the critically important
areas of science, technology and innovation.
Necessarily, because of the importance of these two areas we have mentioned,
as well as others, the Presidency will make certain that it works closely with
the relevant Ministries to ensure that we achieve the results we need.
The Honourable Members will remember that when I addressed the Joint Sitting
of both Houses of Parliament on the 9th February this year, I mentioned that
government would continue with its work to improve the capacity and
organisation of the state. In this regard, government has implemented several
measures to strengthen, especially, the capacity of our municipalities so that
these local government structures can contribute to the all-round struggle to
defeat poverty and underdevelopment in our country.
We have therefore started implementing the Five-year Strategic Agenda to
support the local sphere of government. This Agenda has three strategic
priorities, which are:
* ensuring practical and co-ordinated hands-on support to municipalities by the
national and provincial spheres of government;
* refining and strengthening the policy, regulatory, and the fiscal environment
of the local sphere of government; and
* addressing the structure and governance arrangements in local government.
Madam Speaker,
I am happy to report to Honourable Members that we have already started to make
progress in realising the objectives of the Five-year Strategic Agenda.
As the Minister for Provincial and Local Government indicated in his Budget
Vote Speech last week, we are beginning to witness some significant
improvements in the capacity of municipalities that are being supported through
Project Consolidate. For instance, as the Minister indicated, municipalities
that are receiving assistance with their Municipal Billing Systems have seen
their revenue collection increase by an average of 21.4%. Through Project
Consolidate we are also providing technical capacity to some of our
municipalities in order to support infrastructure development and already there
are positive results because of this intervention.
We owe the successes we are beginning to see in part to the efforts of 29
organisations and nearly 300 individuals with specialist skills who are working
together with government to ensure that we strengthen the capacity of our local
government structures. On behalf of government, I would like to thank all of
them and invite many others to join us in this important partnership so as to
transform our municipalities into efficient and effective institutions that
will help to change the living conditions of all our people for the better.
I must also express our sincere appreciation to our traditional leaders for
their very constructive engagement with government as well as with the
challenges that face our people. In this regard, I am happy to congratulate
Kgosi Kutama and Kgosi Maubane on their election last month as Chair and Deputy
Chair of the National House of Traditional Leaders.
We have agreed with the Minister for Provincial and Local Government that he
should create a special directorate within his Department which will focus
exclusively on matters that relate to the traditional leaders, further to
strengthen the excellent partnership that has emerged.
Madame Speaker:
Government's work to strengthen the capacity of the state also involves
recruiting into the public service and retaining individuals with skills. As
the Minister for Public Service and Administration reported to Parliament
almost a fortnight ago, one of the ways we are trying to achieve this goal is
through introducing salary structures that are relevant to specific occupations
so that our public servants in those occupations can be appropriately rewarded
for the skills they bring to the public service.
Indeed, in the present salary negotiations, among other things, government
is proposing the introduction of a new salary structure which would
appropriately reward professionals in the medical, nursing and legal fields as
well as educators and social workers.
I therefore trust that worker representatives will utilise the existing
channels to look closely at the proposals on the table in order to reach an
agreement that, inter alia, would benefit the professionals in the public
service, and therefore the public whom they are employed to serve.
In this regard, I would like to reiterate our confidence that, in time,
government as employer and the public service unions will find one another and
bring to a conclusion the current negotiations, informed by the objectives to
realise a wage settlement that improves the salaries of employees, ensures
appropriate reward for good performance, and acknowledges the unique
contribution of public professionals, and is at the same time affordable and
therefore sustainable.
I should at the same time express my strongest condemnation, as would all
law-abiding citizens, of the irresponsible element that has used the
negotiation process to engage in unacceptable criminal activities. All of us
should ask ourselves, what kind of society we are building and what moral
lessons we are imparting when insults, violence against fellow workers and
damage to property become the stock-in-trade during protests of this kind.
Undoubtedly society does not benefit from such illegal activities; neither do
workers themselves, in whose name these acts of thuggery are committed.
Madam Speaker,
Better coordination and integration of government work across all spheres is
critical, particularly because our programmes can make the desired impact only
if they are carried out in a manner that obviates duplication and ensures
complementarity.
With regard to integrated planning, we have previously stated that the
alignment of the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP), the
Provincial Growth and Development Strategies (PGDS) and municipal Integrated
Development Plans (IDPs) is of crucial importance.
To this end, The Presidency launched a series of initiatives.
Firstly, the NSDP, which was originally approved in 2003 by government, has
been updated. Secondly, at provincial level the process of aligning the
different planning frameworks, started with the development of guidelines for
aligning provincial growth and development strategies to the NSDP in 2005.
During the last financial year, all provincial growth and development
strategies were assessed and, where necessary, reworked to ensure such
alignment.
Thirdly, the alignment of planning frameworks was initiated at district and
metro level with a pilot project involving 13 districts. While the pilot
project will be completed at the end of this month, it is already generating
important lessons that will inform the rollout to the rest of the country over
the remainder of the term of the present government.
Lastly, to ensure a common base of reference data for spatial planning,
intensive work was undertaken using technical specialists to develop
geo-spatial profiles that have been disaggregated to the ward level. These
profiles have been made available to districts that were part of the pilot
project; but will also be distributed to all other district and metropolitan
councils.
Prominent among the lessons emerging from the pilot project is that the
nature and quality of coordination and interaction between municipalities and
national and provincial sector departments require improvement so that
development impact on localities can be maximised.
Further, we have had to speed up the process of regularising our land-use
management system. The existence of a plethora of laws regulating land-use
across the country results in inefficient and inequitable utilisation of this
scarce resource, and perpetuates the spatial patterns inherited from
apartheid.
To address these challenges, the Land Use Management Bill will be finalised by
Cabinet in the coming few weeks and submitted to parliament.
As part of the effort to maximise the utilisation of state resources and
mobilise private sector resources in pursuit of social development, a
comparative study of six middle-income countries on national strategic
development planning was undertaken in 2006. These countries are Brazil, Chile,
India, Malaysia, South Korea and Tunisia. The aim of the study was to
investigate processes of strategic planning, the content of such plans, the
institutional mechanisms and so on.
The study has been completed and its recommendations will soon be considered
by Cabinet. We are also taking forward the scenario building process to examine
the possible combination of domestic and global dynamics during the second and
third decades of our liberation â towards 2019 and beyond.
Honourable Members,
We have taken various steps in the past year to strengthen the government-wide
monitoring and evaluation system. These include the creation of a policy
platform for the functioning of the system, led by The Presidency, with
specialised contributions from National Treasury, Statistics South Africa, and
the Departments of Provincial and Local Government and Public Service and
Administration.
Co-ordinated by the Presidency, Cabinet continues to receive bi-monthly
reports from the Clusters of Departments on the implementation of our annual
Programme of Action. This in turn is published on the government website, the
better to ensure that the public takes part in monitoring the work of
government.
Following the commitment we made during the Ten Year Review, government will
within the next fortnight publish an assessment of progress made during the
first half of its term (the mid-term review), based on a set of 70 Development
Indicators. The publication will provide an overview of developments in areas
such as economic growth and transformation, employment, poverty and inequality,
household and community assets, health, education, social cohesion, safety and
security, international relations and governance.
Madam Speaker,
Strong monitoring and evaluation capacity within government of necessity also
means checking and re-checking the facts in order fully to understand the
reality in our country, the better to fashion programmes and responses that
help us to move faster to our objective of building a better life for all.
This also entails reference to independently published research from, and
interactions with, for instance, academic experts, ratings agencies that advise
investors, and market research organisations.
To the doomsayers who have eyes to see but cannot see the strong performance
of our economy, we say, check with all these experts and you will discover that
they know what most South Africans know, that:
* by September this year, the South African economy will have been growing for
eight solid years, longer than ever before in the recorded economic history of
our country;
* our current rate of growth has remained at a steady high level for longer
than ever before in our history;
* since 2004, real incomes per person, on average, have risen at around 4
percent per year;
* more than 500 000 new jobs have been created annually since September
2004;
* investment has risen steadily from 14.7% of GDP in the first quarter of 2002
to 19.2% of GDP in the last quarter of 2006; and,
* in the last quarter of 2006 investment grew at an annualised rate of 16%,
well ahead of our AsgiSA target of 10% per year.
These facts are not contested among experts in the field, except for those
who say that we may be undercounting some of these key numbers because the
sample frames we use have not kept up with a changing economic structure.
There are also some who assert that many of the jobs created are in cyclical
sectors like retail and construction, where job security is tenuous. Others
point out that a considerable number of the new jobs created are in the
informal sector. Yes, this is true.
But does this mean that we should not celebrate the fact that we are now
creating jobs more rapidly than ever before in our history? And should we not
be proud of the fact that unlike most developing economies, most of our jobs
are created in the formal sector?
Should we be discouraging the millions of South Africans who now believe
that a commitment to hard work and getting themselves educated is likely to
lead to a more prosperous future?
Of course not!
Indeed, we should celebrate the fact that the overwhelming majority of South
Africans believe, from their lived experience, that tomorrow is likely to be
better than today, and that their own hard work will help make it happen.
Madam Speaker;
In addition to the report that the Honourable Deputy President will provide on
AsgiSA, I would like to indicate that the annual Industrial Policy Action Plan
to realise the objectives of the National Industrial Policy Framework will be
finalised by Cabinet in the next few weeks, focusing on key sectors of the
economy and will indicate how best to leverage public spending for industrial
development. The action plan will be incorporated into the government's
programme of action from next year onwards.
One of the challenges facing us is the nurturing and development of small,
medium and micro enterprises. We have therefore taken measures to stimulate
small business development, including alleviating the regulatory burden on
small businesses and reducing the tax burden.
A toolkit is being developed to help municipalities reduce red tape around
municipal regulations that affect small, medium and micro-enterprises in
particular.
As Honourable Members may be aware, Cabinet requested The Presidency,
working with National Treasury, to put in place a Regulatory Impact Assessment
(RIA) tool, in order to ensure that our regulatory regime in all policy areas
facilitates, rather than hamper growth and development. This will be piloted
over the next two years.
As Government we continue to intensify the fight against poverty on all
fronts. Our initiatives are well known in this regard and for this reason I
would like to focus here on one specific task that The Presidency is required
to undertake, over and above its oversight function in respect of the
Executive.
The House will remember that in 2004 we announced that in order for us to be
able properly to target our intervention in the provision of services, we need
a better understanding of dynamics in our households. The National Income
Dynamics Study (NIDS) will assist us in this regard. A pilot study on specific
households will be undertaken in the next few months, and the fieldwork will be
undertaken between January and April 2008. The first of the dataset will be
available in 2009, creating the baseline against which we will be able to
follow up changes in income and expenditure among these households for many
years to come.
Combined with the comprehensive anti-poverty strategy about which I spoke
during the State of the Nation Address in February, this initiative will help
us in identifying specific interventions required in specific households to
make the maximum impact.
One such intervention, which deserves special mention, is the provision of
income in the form of social grants. The latest figures (as of March 2007)
indicate that about 13.2 million people are now accessing these grants, from
2,6 million in 1994 and 6,8 million in 2003. It is as a consequence of this, as
well as greater levels of labour-absorption in the economy, that the extent and
depth of income poverty has been significantly reduced especially since
2001.
We will continue to consolidate the gains we have already made and look for
further innovative ways of complementing this and other poverty eradication
initiatives such as job-creation, skills development, provision of finance and
other forms of assistance to small businesses.
This we need to do so that we can continue to accelerate the process of
pushing back the frontiers of poverty.
At the same time, however, we should acknowledge the fact that while incomes
of poor people are improving in real and absolute terms, this is not at the
same rate as the improvement in the income of those who are well-off within our
society. Thus, we do face the challenge, as a nation, to address
inequality.
This task, and the broader challenges of accelerating the rate of economic
growth, improving the image of our country abroad, attending to the specific
needs of marginalized sectors of our society, promoting value systems of
self-respect and community solidarity and strengthening partnerships in the
fight against crime, require the forging of partnerships, both locally and
internationally, across a whole range of areas.
In this regard, over the past year the President and other Cabinet members
have had the opportunity to engage with representatives of various sectors of
our society and friends from abroad through the Presidential Working Groups and
other councils. With regard to the economic matters we met, as South Africans,
through the Trade Union, Black Business, Big Business, Business Unity South
Africa (BUSA), Commercial Agriculture and Joint Working Groups.
The discussions have concentrated on the need to accelerate economic growth
and to ensure that the growth generated is shared so as to meet government's
objective of halving poverty and unemployment by 2014. Many important views and
concerns were raised in these meetings and government has incorporated these
into the Programme of Action, including AsgiSA.
Through these meetings our social partners have made invaluable
contributions to the common national effort of building a better life for all.
Among other positive developments, business and labour have re-dedicated
themselves to accelerate the implementation of the commitments made at the
Growth and Development Summit. These commitments include working together as
social partners to address the challenge of the skills shortage in the country
as well as working together to assist in the growth of the BPO, tourism,
agro-processing, and other growth sectors identified in the National Industrial
Policy Framework.
Two recent initiatives in this regard deserve special mention. Firstly, a
special two-day Trade Union Working Group meeting was held in March this year
to discuss globalisation and its effect on employment and worker organisation;
and it was agreed that a three-a-side task team would be set up to take the
discussions forward and make concrete proposals.
Secondly, towards the end of last year, the Big Business Working Group
agreed to a closer working relationship with government on fighting crime and
has allocated resources for this purpose through the Business Against Crime
initiative.
In our engagement with the Presidential Working Group on Higher Education,
we have identified practical ways of ensuring that the Higher Education sector
in our country is further strengthened to assert its intellectual leadership
role in all areas of our life; to enhance knowledge creation, production and
impact through research and innovation; to develop responsive and innovative
curricula; significantly to improve throughput and graduation rates; to help to
foster "critical consciousness"; and to use knowledge to deepen democracy and
speed up social development.
Through the Presidential Working Group on Women we have the opportunity to
engage with the cross-section of the leadership of women on the many challenges
facing us to improve the lives of women, both in urban and rural areas.
Specific issues for follow up in this regard include the proposed Retirement
Fund for Women and the provision of Water and Sanitation.
Through the Presidential Working Group of the National Religious Leaders,
government and the religious sector have agreed on a Memorandum of
Understanding to work in partnership on Early Childhood Development (ECD), Home
and Community Based Care (HCBC) especially in the fight against HIV and AIDS,
Skills Development and Adult Basic Education and Training, and issues of Social
Cohesion with special emphasis on the area of strengthening youth networks and
building local partnerships in the fight against crime.
Through the Youth Working Group issues such as the role of the private
sector in supporting youth development efforts, evaluating the responsiveness
of the national fiscus to youth needs, and the finalisation of a National Youth
Policy have been discussed, and specific tasks undertaken to take our work
further.
I cite these specific examples in part to underline the fact that, as with
the rest of government work, our interaction with social partners is more and
more taking the form of identifying specific practical tasks for action, rather
than mere reflection on broad policy matters.
The Presidential Panel of Economic Advisers, established last year, assisted
us by providing independent and well-informed insights on various public policy
issues, relating to the development of our country and its people. The same
applies to the content of our engagement with international partners through
the International Investment Council (IIC) and the Presidential International
Advisory Council on Information Society and Development (PIAC).
Madam Speaker,
We are happy that the Izimbizo campaign has developed into an important and
well-established element of our democracy.
This is a catalytic forum that enables communities to be part of united
national action to change their living conditions for the better. In the past
four years the Izimbizo process has helped us to make a number of interventions
that are making a positive impact on the lives of our people. These
include:
* sharing practical approaches to addressing barriers to the effective
implementation of the programme of action;
* identifying practical ways in which other spheres of government can assist in
implementing municipal Integrated Development Plans;
* identifying and addressing challenges of technical expertise and professional
skills; and,
* strengthening the partnership between government and the people.
Earlier this year we reviewed and reformatted the Izimbizo process to align it
through the spheres of government and improve follow-up on issues raised by the
people.
Honourable Members:
As you know, later this week, President Sepp Blatter of FIFA will be in our
country once again. I am very pleased to say that he will find us well on
course with our preparations for both the Federations Cup in 2009 and the FIFA
Soccer World Cup in 2010. Addressing the media at FIFA Headquarters on May 15
this year, Sepp Blatter said:
"Back in 1998 I first said that I wanted to bring the FIFA World Cup to
Africaâ¦and three years from now, South Africa will host the competitionâ¦The
South African LOC is well structured and we are continuing to monitor the
construction of the stadiums to ensure that all deadlines are met. Plan A is
South Africa, Plan B is South Africa and Plan C is South Africa. It's my hope
that by the end of 2010, the footballing world will be experiencing the same
highs that we experienced at the end of last year''''s FIFA World Cup in
Germany."
I have no doubt that our Local Organising Committee, government at all
levels, and everybody concerned will do the necessary work to guarantee that we
host a better tournament in 2010 than the excellent 2006 German World Cup.
Madam Speaker,
With regard to the important issue of crime, we are pleased that the business
community, the religious leaders and our communities in general are partnering
government in a meaningful manner.
We are also deploying the resources available in the criminal justice system
to combat especially contact crimes at the places and times they are most
likely to occur. We also continue to work to ensure proper coordination
throughout the criminal justice system.
Honourable Members:
When we addressed this House last year on the occasion of the Budget Vote of
The Presidency, we made the point that the accomplishment of our development
goals was inextricably linked to the success of similar efforts in our region,
our continent and the rest of the world. Accordingly, we asserted that the
discharge of our international obligations would remain an important part of
the work of The Presidency as well as the rest of our government.
One of our immediate and continuing challenges is the steadfast pursuit of
our African Agenda, and within that the acceleration of the process of the
political and economic integration of the Southern Africa Development
Community, including progress towards the establishment of a Free Trade
Area.
We will also play our role in the implementation of the programmes of the
New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), and ensure that the
partnerships agreements that we forge with other countries and regions are
translated into practical and tangible programmes that promote real
transformation in the lives of the people of our continent.
Further, in this regard, we have agreed to participate in a structured
dialogue with our G8 partners over the next two years, as well as strengthen
the NEPAD-G8 follow-up mechanisms.
As the Hon Members are aware, the Report of the African Peer Review Panel
will be submitted to our Peers during the days when the AU will be holding its
Summit Meeting in Accra next month.
In a couple of weeks we will participate in what the AU has described as the
"Grand Debate" whose main focus will be consideration of the proposal to
advance towards the formation of a united African government. This will offer
us an opportunity to address the real challenges that should be addressed to
promote African integration and unity.
I would like to take this opportunity once more to acknowledge our sons and
daughters in uniform who continue to make a contribution to peace processes in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Sudan and the Comoros. The same
appreciation is due to individuals and organisations, both in the public and
private sectors as well as non-governmental organisations, who have responded
in a commendable manner in offering assistance in the electoral processes and
other undertakings in the DRC, Nigeria, Burundi and other countries.
As the Honourable Members are aware, we have been mandated by the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) to assist the leadership of Zimbabwe to
find a lasting solution to the challenges that they face. We intend to move
with speed in executing this mandate, and are encouraged in this regard by the
positive attitude evinced by the protagonists in that country who, we are
certain, do recognise that the people of Zimbabwe expect of them nothing less
than concrete action to extricate them from the difficulties they face
currently.
Our election to the United Nations Security Council as non-permanent member
has accorded us the privilege and honour of serving the international community
and indeed our continent in the search for peace, stability and a secure
environment for citizens of the world. We shall do our best to fulfil the
expectations of humanity in this regard, informed by the UN Charter and the
aspirations of billions across the globe who yearn for an equitable world
order.
Madam Speaker;
These, then, are some of the major programmes that we have undertaken during
the course of last year, to meet our mandate as The Presidency to lead the
processes of planning and implementation in the Executive and public service.
Guided by the Programme of Action of Government, we will continue to strengthen
the capacity of The Presidency to discharge these responsibilities. It is in
this spirit, Honourable Members, that I commend the Budget of the Presidency to
the National Assembly.
Thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
12 June 2007
Source: The Presidency (http://www.thepresidency.gov.za)
