Speech by the Minister of Small Business Development, Ms Lindiwe Zulu, at the Celebration of Twenty Years of Freedom of Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela
Programme Director, Kgosi Nyalala Pilane,
Executive Mayor Moses Kotane, Ms Charmaine Lekete Deputy Minister of Tourism, Ms Thoko Xasa,
Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Mr Obed Bapela,
MEC for Arts and Traditional Affairs, Ms Tebogo Modise,
MEC for Finance, Economy and Enterprise Development, Ms Wendy Nelson,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen
On this special occasion, as we celebrate twenty years of freedom and democracy, and as we look back with pride at the achievements of Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela, I wish to join thousands of Bakgatla from Moruleng to Mochudi in Botswana and say: “Kgabo-Mokgatla, ga e je borekgu!” Tonight, I am an honorary Mokgatla!
We are gathered here tonight to declare boldly and loudly that: In these twenty years of freedom, Bakgatla, like the rest of our country, have a good story to tell! I urge you to continue to tell this story with all the enthusiasm and energy at your disposal. It is a story of resilience and triumph by ordinary men and women who had the vision to forge their path and lay claim to an economic legacy once viciously denied them and many of their compatriots by an inhuman system.
The story of Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela is a story of a people who decided to take their destiny into their own hands. It is a story of vukuzenzele! The monumental achievements of Bakgatla within a mere twenty years of our freedom is a practical demonstration and a vivid reminder of what ordinary people can achieve if they seize the opportunities brought by our new democracy.
On this important occasion, we pay tribute to the vision of Bakgatla-Ba- Kgafela for seizing the opportunities presented by the 1994 breakthrough. Bakgatla are a living example that our constitutional democratic institutions can co-exist peacefully with the organs of traditional leadership, and that traditional leaders, working together with government, have the capacity and capability to lead development initiatives in their communities. We hope that other communities will emulate this noble example.
When I was in Moruleng in August to mark the launch of the Small Business Development Fund, I said the following: Since the advent of democracy, the democratic government has worked with relentless commitment to ensure that dikgosi occupy their rightful place as legitimate leaders of their rural communities. Government is determined to protect the legitimacy of our institutions of traditional leadership and to defend their special place in our system of democratic governance”.
I made this point to explain the firmly held view of the ANC that Institutions of Traditional Leadership have a special place in our constitutional democracy. As government and the ANC, we see no contradiction between democracy and traditional leadership. Many traditional leaders participated in the founding conference of the African National Congress in Bloemfontein, 102 years ago. You will recall that at the time, the ANC had an upper house of traditional leaders and it had respected traditional leaders as honorary Presidents, for example Dalindyebo of the abaThembu, Montsioa of aBarolong, Lewanika of Barotseland which was a part of Zambia, King Letsie of Lesotho, Ian Khama of Botswana, as well as King Dinizulu.
Indeed, our traditional leaders refused to be spectators in their people’s struggle for national liberation. Many were freedom fighters in their own, as demonstrated by their active participation in the wars against dispossession and colonialism. Very often we forget about the immeasurable sacrifices made by many of our traditional leaders in defence of our land. So as we celebrate twenty years of freedom, we must also celebrate the role of traditional leaders who laid the foundation for our freedom by supporting the struggle for liberation.
Opening the National House of Traditional Leaders in 2011, President Jacob Zuma had this to say:
“Traditional leaders played a key role in the struggle for freedom, and many made untold sacrifices. We inherit the legacy of those traditional leaders who fought against colonial occupation, who were the founding fathers of the liberation movement, and who belonged to the generations of Inkosi Luthuli, Madiba and others. Now is the time for us to work together to build on this legacy, cement democracy and build a better life for our people. Now is the time for us, to work together, to ensure that services are delivered faster to our people, especially those in rural areas, who tend to be marginalised”.
As government, we understand and appreciate the important role that traditional leaders play in the ongoing national effort to push back the frontiers of poverty, particularly in the rural areas. As we engage in the task of creating a better life for all, we will continue to rely on the contribution, wisdom and guidance of traditional leaders.
The democratic government inherited an economy that was unable to respond to the developmental challenges of the new democratic order. It is for this reason that after the demise of the system of apartheid in 1994, our country began a new struggle. This was a struggle to transform the economy to enable it to serve the needs and aspirations of all South Africans. We did all of this because we were aware that the democratic breakthrough would be meaningless if it is not accompanied with a vibrant and growing economy that can benefit all our people.
Working together with their democratic government, Bakgatla have made decisive advances over the past eleven years and a solid basis for sustained growth and development is now firmly in place. As a result of our work in the past twenty years, we are today able to say; we have laid a solid foundation for bringing dignity back to many black South Africans and women of our country. Equally, we are able to say we can now begin the process of accelerating the process of changing the lives of all our people for the better.
Today, our people have access to opportunities to improve their lives as many of the barriers that prevented them from reaching their dreams have been brought down. Progressively we are making advances in our quest to ensure that none of our people are excluded from the economic mainstream, because South Africa belongs to them too. This is a good story we must tell about our twenty years of freedom.
But we also be honest and confront the unpalatable truth. Twenty years since our freedom, the participation of black people in the country’s economy leaves much to be desired. It must trouble our collective conscience that the wealth of this nation remains elusive for the majority of its citizens. It must also be a matter of concern to all of us that, twenty years since our freedom, the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality still bear a largely black, rural and woman face.
It must worry all of us, including the private sector, and move us into a collective radical action to transform our economy so that it responds to the needs of the masses of our people. Anything less is an invitation to political and social instability. We are convinced that the continued exclusion of some sectors of our society from the economic mainstream can only spell disaster for our country both politically and economically. To deal with this anomaly, government has made a commitment to set the country on a path of radical economic and social transformation in order to accelerate our onslaught on the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
The dawn of democracy and freedom in our country has unlocked our capacity as a nation to work together to address common challenges. On this twentieth anniversary of our freedom, we reiterate our call for partnership between government, traditional leaders, civil society and private sectors. It is this partnership that holds the key to unlock our country’s economic potential, thus affording us a golden opportunity to launch a sustained onslaught on poverty, unemployment, inequality and underdevelopment. Indeed, all of us must accept that we carry joint responsibility to redistribute the wealth of our nation. Government cannot be expected to be a buffer between the wealthy and the poor.
As partners in the radical economic transformation of our society, we must continue to prioritize the economic empowerment of all our people, job creation and poverty eradication. This we must do in order to give practical meaning to the pledge we made during our struggle for liberation that we would never consider our mission complete and our liberation achieved, if the people of our country are not freed from poverty, inequality and economic deprivation.
The Ministry of Small Business Development was established as part of a recognition of the important role this sector plays in contributing to the social and economic development of the country. In fullfilling our mandate, we will seek to promote a co-ordinated and integrated support across government spheres and institutions for SMMEs.
We will pursue an aggressive entrepreneurship drive and create an enabling environment that will make it easy for South Africans, particularly the youth, to start and sustain their businesses. We will continue to look up to the stalwarts of black business such as Richard Maponya and Sam Motsuenyane to help us reignite the spirit of entrepreneurship that refused to surrender to the viciousness of apartheid and its determination to make black people permanent drawers of water and hewers of wood
As government, we are convinced that if we are to make an impact on the job creation front, we have to invest in small and medium businesses because they are the key drivers of economic growth and job creation. The much-needed economic growth and employment opportunities will come from policy interventions that recognise that small businesses must be empowered to thrive and grow into profitable enterprises. Our point of departure is that small businesses can be the backbones of any economy and the main driver of economic growth, poverty reduction and job creation. However, the sad reality is that South Africa has one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurship activities in the world.
We now have an opportunity to move with speed on the critical question of de-racializing the economy and opening up opportunities for women, youth and people living with disabilities. The time is now for us to intensify our efforts aimed at broadening participation in the economic mainstream of our country.
As the NDP makes clear, getting South Africa onto a high-growth trajectory demands that we fundamentally change our game plan and place small businesses and co-operatives at the centre of our war against poverty, inequality and unemployment. Developing a strong and growing SME community is a cornerstone of the NDP’s vision.
We see entrepreneurship as one of the most important economic drivers. The National Development Plan (NDP) projects that 90% of new jobs will come from the SME sector. Yet we know that in South Africa entrepreneurial activity has remained relatively low, far below the global average of comparable economies, and of even more concern, that 80- 90% of new businesses fail in the first two years.
To achieve the goals as envisaged in the NDP, in the next five years, we will pay focused attention to providing effective support to small businesses, reducing obstacles to doing business wherever possible and to expand access to economic opportunities for historically excluded and vulnerable groups. Our interventions will be in the area of: access to finance, business skill development, market access, competitiveness, easing the regulatory burden and advancing localisation, particularly leveraging on public procurement. Indeed, the country’s high rate of unemployment and extreme inequality call for bold and far-sighted interventions.
We will work hard to reduce the level of bureaucracy through the adoption of the national red tape reduction programme to be implemented in all municipalities. We will improve our monitoring and evaluation measures to ensure that all weaknesses are addressed for ease of doing business for all small enterprises.
My Ministry will continue to walk this long road with Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela because, through their practical work, they have given concrete meaning to vuku’zenzele. I wish to commend Kgosi Pilane and his people for having the foresight to understand that the minerals beneath our soil will not be with us forever. That is why you are utilising mining as a catalyst to launch your development while diversifying the Moruleng economy to meet the demands and economic uncertainties of tomorrow. If properly harnessed, your rich mining, agricultural and tourism resources would have turned the 32 villages of Moruleng into an economic paradise by the time we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of our freedom and democracy.
I call on all our people, young and old, to seize the opportunities created by our constitutional democracy to improve their own lives. Together, let us move South Africa forward.
I thank you.
