NEWS RELEASE
14 November 2003
THE
Western Cape provincial government has announced the creation of a R77 million
Ikapa lihumayo (growing and sharing the Cape) fund. The money is to be used to
stimulate industrial growth and to kick-start a human resources and skills
development strategy in the province, finance MEC Ebrahim Rasool said. This was
just one of the concrete steps which were to be taken as a result of the
province’s historical (first-ever) growth and development summit, held at the
Cape Town International Convention Centre yesterday. Others government
initiatives included that the
province is to create 120 000 new jobs within the next few years by using the
provincial public works budget and that a series of so-called sector summits
would be held to thrash out what approach different kinds of businesses would
take to implement the decisions of the summit. The summit was attended by
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, Mayor Nomaindia Mefeketo, the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), community organisations, eight
national government departments, most Western Cape local governments,
state-owned enterprises and development finance institutions, public entities
and the provincial government.A framework agreement on growth and development in
the Western Cape, endorsed by labour, government, business and civil society was
also signed. Monitoring mechanisms to ensure that the summit’s decisions are
implemented include a restructuring of the Provincial Development Council, which
now becomes a platform for social dialogue between the parties. Minister Manuel
said the national Growth and Development Summit which had taken place in June
this year in Johannesburg had as its objective “halving the unemployment rate
by 2014. “The (national) summit agreement makes two assumptions. Firstly, it
is possible, with the right approaches to halve the unemployment rate by
2014.Secondly that we will not be able to provide job for all, today. This
second assumption is a sobering reminder of the size of the problem we face and
the historical legacy that the apartheid economy and education system has left
us with.” Mayor Mfeketo said: “The City of Cape Town, with an annual budget
of R10 billion a year, is committed to working with our colleagues at provincial
and national government strategically so that our capital and operating
expenditure has real, visible results on the ground. This is especially true for
our urban renewal programme, where teamwork began to deliver real improvements
in the quality of life for people, especially in the key areas of Khayelitsha
and Mitchell’s Plain.” Rasool announced that the Ikapa elihumayo (growing
and sharing the Cape) fund would be activated with a R77million contribution
from government within two weeks of the summit. The fund would be used to
“stimulate and incubate industrial sectors, enterprises of all sizes and to
kick-start a human resources and skills development strategy in this
province”. Rasool said: “The
summit must send out a signal that to expect more than just mere survival is
legitimate. That indeed our politics is about improving the conditions of the
poor. That what we emerge with is the articulation of needs which those on whose
behalf we gather can intelligibly recognise as their own. “This is indeed a
perilous business. Is the time for all of us to rise to the occasion because the
needs of strangers are urgent and pressing. This not the time for us as social
partners: government, business, labour and community, to be over-cautious and
risk averse. Our only Our only insurance against peril is that we emerge with
plans which we are able to implement.”Rasool said the “signs were there”
that unless “we gather our collective wills”, identify the common ground,
manage differences and pool resources it would be “too late”. “And we will
find that the tenuous equilibrium in our society cannot hold any longer and that
the needs of strangers are more forcefully becoming the claims of strangers at
our doors. “It is incongruous for those who have families to care for, for the
unemployed, those who live here in hunger and those who come here in
expectation, it is incongruous to explain that their condition is so bad when
our growth in Gross Regional Product has remained at 2.9% higher than the
average national growth; that in 2002 more than a million tourists visited the
Cape; and that our exports grew 48% last year. The signs are of prosperity, but
the experience is of poverty. “Unless this disjuncture is addressed openly and
honestly, starting at this GDS, we will gather in a few years to discuss a
social catastrophe – as we do so readily in context of Zimbabwe. He said the
Western Cape’s unemployment figure of 23.16% had to be
seen in the context of the structural shift in the economy towards the tertiary
sectors. “While 55 out of every 100 new entrants (in the job market) found
work in the Western Cape, the combined effect of the demand for skilled labour
and the devastating legacy of Apartheid’s particular harshness to the African
community through for example job reservation in the Western Cape means that
only three out of 100 Africans found employment in the Western Cape between 1995
and 2002. This is hardly a foundation for the non-racial future we want to
build. “The fact that 82% of all unemployment is amongst the youth begins to
say that not only is the economy restructuring in the direction of higher
skills, our education system is not even putting graduates in a position to
compete for skilled jobs,” Rasool said. He said government’s message to the
summit was that “we know what needs to be done”.“Under the banner of iKapa
elihlumayo – our strategy to grow and share the Cape – we re putting in
place the building blocks for growth in the economy by focusing on tourism, the
film industry, the oil and gas industry, the clothing and textile sector,
agriculture, craft, automotive parts, call centres, business processing etc.”
Rasool said government was waiting for the outcome of the summit before
intensifying its efforts, together with the other stakeholders. “There are 120
000 public works jobs that President Thabo Mbeki has commanded us to create; of
the learnerships (apprenticeships in industry) to be established (countrywide)
this province has been challenged to establish 1 000; and the Ikapa elihumayo
fund will be activated within two weeks of this summit to stimulate and incubate
industrial sectors, enterprises of all sizes and to kickstart a human resources
and skills development strategy in this province.” Manuel said: “We are a
small economy trying to survive in a turbulent and often unfair world. While we
talk about how unfair the world is, about how Northern markets are closed to
many of our goods, about how the world’s rich subsidises their cotton
producers at the expense of the poor. But the human face of these large,
seemingly intractable problems, is the single mother of three who has just been
retrenched. If we cannot find a solution for her, then we are not worthy of
being leaders in the economy. Whether we gather as leaders of labour, of
the community, of business or of government.”
E N D S
On
behalf of
The Provincial Administration: Western Cape
For further
information, please contact Rosemary Hare at Rosemary Hare, Mitchell, Wicomb
Public Relations, on (021) 465–1166 or 082 459 6226.
All information documents produced by Rosemary Hare, Mitchell, Wicomb Public Relations are available on the website www.rosehare.co.za