Deputy Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga: Perdekop Imbizo

Deputy Minister Ms Sindisiwe Chikunga at Perdekop Imbizo: Town Development and Youth Career Expo Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, citizens and youth of this beloved country, we meet just four days after our commemoration of human rights day where we remembered those who perished at the hands apartheid repression in Sharpeville and elsewhere.

It is however only four weeks ahead of our celebration of the day we finally buried our chains of colonial oppression and were reborn as a new nation.

Today is a day in which we express those freedoms for which comrade President Oliver Tambo sacrificed his entire productive life.

We express these freedoms by the very act of coming together, meeting at this Imbizo to explore ways of taking this freedom to another level. The repressive laws of our recent past would have allowed no such meeting of progressive minds.

It is these freedoms that afford us the platforms to continue to mould the kind of future we want for ourselves as individuals and for the communities we represent.

I humbly stand before you people of South Africa, the people of Perdekop bearing the memory of comrade Oliver Tambo to continue to build a South Africa that shall bear the stamp of a truly free people – proud and tall among the free nations of the world.

I also stand here loaded with the positive promise of the National Development Plan, which drives and guides our actions to redress the ills of our colonial past.

The humble nature with which I approach this forum tells of the battle scars worn by the majority of our people, who even in this day continue to suffer inequality, poverty and lack of access to work and means of living.

My approach is humbled by the distance we continue to feel of the real freedoms our leaders like comrade Oliver Tambo dreamed of. The sting and pain of the ever deepening poverty among the faces of our people and the widening gap we still see between the rich and the poor among South Africans remain worrisome though never discouraging challenges. This gap in incomes, the social inequality it fosters, remain a priority focus of our government.

Though we are committed to many ways of resolving the state of affairs, collectively as government led by the African National Congress, we are committed to the belief that our actions must resoundingly produce a better future for all.

This future falls naturally in the hands of our youth, hence our focus at this Imbizo on the development of Perdekop, and above all the development of the skills and capabilities of our youth, especially women youth who will have to propel this development.

Our visit to this corner of our beloved country bears not magic answers to the many questions we ask ourselves about where to from here, but we bring with us suggestions about solutions to the challenges we face in the community.

Bantu bakithi, lana ngihamba nabaphathi bezinhlelo ezahlukehlukene zikahulumeni. Bavakashe kunye nami bequkethe izincazelo ngokuningi okwenziwa uhulumeni okungaba zinsiza ezibalulekile kumphakathi wase Perdekop namaphethelo.

Kuzokhulunywa ngezemihlaba, ukuthuthukiswa kwezindawo zethu, ukubuyiselwa kwemihlaba, ukusunguleka kwezoshishino nangezempilo. Mina ngikhulume ngetransport namathuba adalwa ngezokuthutha . Sibesinethemba ukuthi kuzolandelelwa esikukhulumile.

Transport is the heart beat of the growth of our economy and finds itself in the middle of radically changing South Africa,  where the focus has tightened towards drastically reversing the poverty that continues to insult the dignity of our people, the glaring inequality and abnormal unemployment that discourages and frustrates our youth and the vast numbers of our people.

This radical socio-economic approach sits at the core of our National Development Plan, which prioritises

• Raising job creation through faster economic growth;
• Improving the quality of education, skills development and innovation
• Building the capacity of the state to play a developmental and transformative role

As the Department of transport we recognise effectiveness of this approach in addressing the need for this drastic turnaround. This is because we believe transport creates valuable social and economic links within the nation, regions and economic activities that cut across the rest of the world by:

• Improving people’s quality of life
• Building the country’s economy
• Making our country more efficient
• Trading competitively
• Giving skilled people a better chance of getting work
• Investing more in the country

• Ensuring a safe, affordable and accessible transport system

Fellow South Africans, our contribution at this Imbizo is largely biased towards the matter of skills development because we believe that the education and skilling are key to building adequate capacity to push the radical development we imagine.

This is clearly stated in this statement from the NDP:

Alongside hard work and effort, capabilities and the opportunities that flow from development enable individuals to live the lives they aspire to. A developmental state builds the capabilities of people to improve their own lives, while intervening to correct historical inequalities. Unquote.

As mentioned earlier the officials present here with us will speak to the different enablers that are there, but it is perhaps opportune to take this moment to talk further about Transport.

The context of transport

Ladies and gentlemen, when we direct our eyes at what transport does we are immediately struck by the other question of what is done to Transport. In this way, we are then also reminded of its context. In other words, where transport happens, such as the roads, the rail network, the air and the waters across which it ferries movement of people and cargo.

Transport flies as aircraft across the wide skies of our globe, sails as ship or boat on long stretches of river, lake, ocean and sea. Transport rides as train, truck, bus, car, motorbike or bicycle through flat land, hills and valleys, treed streets, or through dusty, narrow and congested streets and across borders always bearing cargo or rider or both.

These movements and platforms cannot materialise without the laws that must govern these spaces of travel, without the laws that must govern these varied means of transport, and cannot happen without the rules that should manage the use of the different means of transport.

Fellow South Africans, these laws guarantee safety of transport, enforce the security of load and persons, certify the quality of transport, and oversee the worth of vehicles and roads, the seaworthiness of vessels and security of the seas and oceans. These laws also define actions that must be taken to protect people and the natural or built environment affected by transport.

The regulations impact positively on the economy of transport, because they are based on sound constitutional principles that promote safety, security, ease of access to the transport network and, in the case of public transport, its affordability for the rest of society.

Human Rights are an essential element of the context of transport

Tied to the laws governing transport are the universal rights to opportunities present in world of transport. The rights we refer to for our purposes here have to do with the openness of participation in the economy of transport. Such participation in any of the subsectors of transport such as rail, road, marine and air transport includes, but is never limited to business and entrepreneurship, professional and regulatory involvement.

We believe that, because it is within their incontestable and constitutionally given rights for all citizens to participate freely and equally in the economy in order to advance themselves and the communities from which they come, it therefore remains government’s duty to protect and promote those rights equally for each individual.

Together with job creation and the eradication of poverty the task of drastically reducing income and social inequality continues to form the priorities of government, thus directly and indirectly improving the application of the following rights of Section 22 of our Constitution in which it is stated that:

"Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms”. And this clause demands that legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken in order to promote the achievement of equality.

Given the many preferences by people regarding careers and the professions they choose to pursue, the constitution states that:

“Every citizen has the right to choose their trade, occupation or profession freely. The practice of a trade, occupation or profession may be regulated by law.”

Our purpose in Perdekop today is to ensure that these two critically important rights are promoted by provision of sound career advice and by the extension of opportunity.

Fellow South Africans, we believe that as government we must satisfy those rights with the resources we have at our disposal, and to that end we must add the commitment and will of government officials to distribute those resources fairly and improve access among all intended beneficiaries. This means that one will not have to bribe anyone to access resources that are legitimately within one’s rights.

In fact our National Transport Master Plan, which sets out the course of actions towards the year 2050 emphasises  the following goals that form part of Medium Strategic Framework based again on the NDP:

• Decent employment through inclusive growth (outcome 4)
• An  efficient, competitive and responsive economic infrastructure network (outcome 6)
• Vibrant, equitable, sustainable rural communities contributing towards food security for all (outcome 7)
• Protect and enhance our environmental assets and natural resources (outcome 10)

These are the outcomes around which our strategic plans are drafted and also outcomes according to which our roles as the department are measured by parliament. Meeting these obligations can however not happen without the active participation of citizens and the private sector. Thus it is that our presence here today is pushed by the need to strike this necessary partnership with the people of Perdekop including farmers and business to assist in finding lasting solutions.

More especially we need our youth to take centre stage in driving these partnerships. We want education and skills development to form the main ingredients in that partnership

Careers in Transport and Admission Requirements

The following are some examples of careers that exist within the transport sector.

• Pilot or Air Transport professions such as Aeronautical Engineering
• Road, Rail, Aviation and Maritime Technical Expertise
• Maritime Search and Rescue
• Transport Planning
• Transport Economics
• Specialisations in Land and Public Transport
• Freight Logistics
• Transport Management

These specialised options in transport careers demand

• Mathematics (Pure) for technical areas
• Physical science
• Geography
• English
• Economics

It is clear that due to the knowledge era within which we live, knowledge of these subjects is key to entry into the most needed professional careers.

Specific collaboration exists already in other partnerships such as with institutions of learning.

Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with Institutions of Learning

The Department of Transport has entered into arrangements and agreements with relevant stakeholders with whom the department shares common goals; in our case shared goals around transport skills development in South Africa.

The higher learning institutions that share our skills development goals include the following:

• University of Johannesburg (UJ)
• Tshwane University of Technology (TUT)
• North West University (NWU)
• University of South Africa (UNISA)
• Cape Peninsular University of Technology (CPTU)
• University of Cape Town (UCT)
• University of Stellenbosch (SU)
• University of Fort Hare (UFH)
• Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University of Technology (NMMU)
• Durban University of Technology (DUT)
• University of Zululand (UNIZULU)

Financial Assistance and Enrolment

We believe that enable resources should always be in place to assist those who want to better their chances in the economy.

Between 2015 and 2016 we funded 803 students; while between 2016 and 2017 we will have funded 800 more students and even greater numbers will be funded between in the near future; with some students ready to complete their studies at the end of this academic year already.

It must be noted that qualifications due for completion will include though not restricted to:

• National Diploma in Transport Management
• BCom Transport Economics
• BTech Transport Economics BCom Logistics
• BCom Hon Logistics
• National Diploma in Transport Logistics
• Diploma in Transport Management
• National Diploma in civil Engineering
• Masters in Engineering

• PhD in Engineering
• Masters in Engineering (Transport) and
• Others.

These are offered at the partner institutions I have mentioned.

There are however critically important skills required with greater urgency and therefore immediate. These include:

Other Partnerships

Equally important is that we have also gotten into partnerships with Technical Schools, TVET Colleges and the Transport Education and Training Authority TETA in order to expand our options beyond universities.

The TETA has gotten into further agreements with institutions such as the WITS Business School and the Pi Company for the International Leadership Development Programme based in South Africa and the Netherlands.

In addition, the TETA has partnered with the Belgian Technical Agency for Integrated Logistics and Ports Management. In the 2016 academic year 22 engineers were receiving training in Ahlstrom in Europe and Brazil and 14 post-graduate students have been sent to World Maritime University (WMU) in Sweden.

It should also be understood that the Department had pledged to training 2590 transport students in 2016 while 2710 had already been trained in the previous academic year.

The South African Maritime Authority (SAMSA) an entity of the Department of Transport has entered into partnerships with the Department of Basic Education for the development of maritime oriented vocational studies. This is offered at assumption of grade nine or grade ten.

Other opportunities are in the form of internships and placements in environments of actual work within government as well as in the private sector.

Internship Placement

According to our Skills Development Report for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 financial years, a total of 429 interns were placed with the following breakdown for 2016/17 financial year:

• 388 Interns within the Department of Transport
• 41 Interns placed in municipalities

While the previous financial year had seen 80 interns, where:

• 65 interns were placed within the DOT;
• 3 Interns placed within State Owned Entities (SOEs) and
• 12 Interns placed in municipalities

The Department of Transport is fast growing a cohort of state of the art traffic police academies that shall endeavour to train and educate highly professional traffic management officials.

One such college has already been launched in Mpumalanga Province.

This is in line with our Constitutional commitment of drastically reducing road crashes and saving lives, fulfilling the highly important safety component of our role as the department.

Thus still an even great number of you gathered here are needed by a South Africa that is accelerating the development of our country to reduce the scarcity of skills such as I have mentioned earlier.

Skills remain key to making South Africa a dynamic country that will be able to compete with other countries on a level footing.

Having the required skills will produce a country whose people are able to make their own decisions about the nature of progress they want.