Address by Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka

27 August 2005

Thank you very much, Minister and also to the Programmes Director.

Honourable Ministers and colleagues and MPs, the NEDLAC Executive Director, Herbert Mkhize, the leaders of Labour, Business and Community Constituencies and the officials from Government present here, ladies and gentleman.

It's a great pleasure for me to be opening the Tenth Annual NEDLAC Summit, especially in the period when social dialogue institutions are under review.

The past decade of NEDLAC's existence and social dialogue has been characterized by building partnerships and commitment from all our social partners. Even though we still need to exploit much more the benefits of these good partnerships that we have developed.

We have been afforded an opportunity, as social partners, collectively, to co-ordinate and integrate our effort in addressing developmental challenges of our country.

Much needs to be done, but the first decade has been encouraging. We have built a foundation, now we need to ensure that we build a very strong top structure.

Programme Director, the Tenth Annual NEDLAC Summit also coincides with a time when we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. The blue print document which addressed the main aspirations of all South African people.

On an occasion such as this, we remember what is stated in the Freedom Charter under the clause "the people shall govern". And I quote….

… "We affirm our recognition of the rights of all peoples including the right to determine our destiny and to work for ourselves, the institutions and the system of Government under which we will by general consent live and work together to build a harmonious society".

The Freedom Charter also, in the clause "the people shall share" says, and I quote …."

A new South Africa can never evolve if the white part of the population lives in the lives of luxury, while the great majority of black South Africans live in conditions of squalor and degradation. The Government should be under a constitutional duty to work towards establishment of a guarantee and expanding floor of social economic rights for everybody. And I believe that NEDLAC is but one of those institutions through which we are advancing the Freedom Charter.

Thank you Professor that you are here also to advance the Freedom Charter.

Impromptu by these important perspectives, we believe that the Freedom Charter is relevant today as we commemorate 50 years of its existence. It still continues to represent the types of society to the depressive one that we became accustomed to during the times of apartheid.

Programme Director, we are hosting this Summit a few days also before the end of the Women's month. The issues that this Summit is trying to address were raised by our foremothers and sisters and brothers during the historic march on August 9th, 1956, and through the Women's Charter which was adopted in 1954, a year before the Freedom Charter.

And issues that were captured in the Women's Charter, were captured in the Freedom Charter, and issues that were captured in the Freedom Charter are now captured in our Constitution.

And I think, NEDLAC, as one of the institutions that flows from the valley of our Constitution therefore, is responsible to ensure that indeed, we attain that ideal world and society that those many people who yearned for freedom, struggled for and committed themselves to.

The historic women's march at the Union Buildings was not only about pass laws, important as the struggle against pass laws were, but it was for a transformation of society, it was against poverty eradication, it was for job creation as well as the restoration of human dignity and respect for all.

I would like to, in this Summit, to declare the unwavering commitment of the Presidency to strengthen the good work and the vibrancy of NEDLAC and the relationship that the partners have built and still need to continue to utilize for all our benefits. Because indeed, it is just one of the legs through which we will be able to attain the society we are yearning for.

The theme for this Tenth Annual Summit, namely growth, decent work, development and social equity, the goal, social change, social dialogue the key - reflects the societal changes our country is faced with now. It cannot but please one to observe that and enshrined in this theme is the far sighted philosophy of consensus seeking decision making. NEDLAC and its sister Labour market institutions have made an indelible mark in promoting industrial peace, productivity, global cooperativeness, economic growth and employment creation.

Industrial peace is fundamental in boosting investor confidence. Without it productivity is undermined. Enterprises have limited time to designate to the development of new Businesses, and as well as to forecast on the strategies to make the models that they develop work.

This eventually leads to limited capacity to compete effectively on a global scale. NEDLAC has grown and matured in the past decade and needs to be applauded for the role it has played in ensuring that there has been less industrial upheaval in the last past years of its existence.

While correctly maintaining that we have put social dialogue on a freeway towards making a meaningful contribution towards economic growth, we are faced with the stubborn reality of unacceptable levels of unemployment and poverty. And our sometimes modest implementation of our agreed positions in NEDLAC, in the GDS, does mean that we loose valuable opportunity to address these vexing issues.

Disparencies between the rich and the poor, between the urban and the rural people persist. I believe that it is high time that we ask ourselves critical questions which will take us beyond what is already known and established, and then we should venture into the unknown terrain in search of lasting solutions for the benefit of all our people as a young democracy in the process of nation building.

Esteemed NEDLAC members, you committed yourself to an historic programme at the Growth and Development Summit. The questions that we still have to ask ourselves, is how much we will be able to implement those commitments. That was a very, very good demonstration of commitment, to patriotism and the readiness to improve the quality of the lives of our people. But we need to move even higher in order to demonstrate that it is not just a commitment that we have but that we've got the will to act.

More jobs, better jobs and decent work for all is GDS's main objective. What more then still needs to be done so that we are able to take advantage of the possibility for us to have and use Labour intensive methods for instance, in relation to our public works programme. I am aware that progress has been made there. The Department of Public Works, working collaboratively with the Business Trust has been able to register progress. However, we believe that we could do more, need to do more, and in this Summit we should be able to dedicate ourselves to working even harder for a much bigger impact and roll out.

That also means that we have to think outside the box, because we need to identify other flagship programmes that we can roll out throughout the country in order to address the issue of unemployment.

We have to ask ourselves also, there are many avenues afforded by flexibility within the parameters of international legal standards. Have we taken full advantage of those opportunities? And again, I believe as we become 10 years, we need to rededicate ourselves to act on some of these opportunities so that we can make even greater impact in our economy.

In June 2005, the ILO adopted a resolution which embraces flexibility as long as it observes legal standards and does take into cognisance the workers are social beings who must have time for their families, time for recreation and all round development.

We need to ask ourselves whether the concept of share deployment, which can contribute to job creation has been interrogated by us to the extent that we can consider it as one of the options that we have to increase the number of people who are economically active.

As this Government, we have committed ourselves to goals that we must attain by the year 2014.

The important ones are those of halving unemployment, as well as poverty by 2014. And every step that we take today determines whether we reach those goals.

Business is known for its uncompromising adherence to bottom line. However, I am sure that can not be all if we are trying to think outside the box. What else do we need to do to ensure that we are not as rigid in defining the bottom line - such that we might have an unintended consequence of excluding sustainability of the environment, national building and economic justice?

How can we find the balance in order to ensure that the definition of bottom line takes into account all these other Constituencies? The benefits of shareholders must also been seen alongside the benefits that must be there for workers for the people within which the companies make their profits, as well as to ensure that we are able overall to create better societies. And as we create better societies, we indeed create robust markets.

We can do more also as Government, Business and Labour to exchange and share skills. We have identified in our previous engagement, the whole challenge of project management skills.

We face many challenges when it comes to implementing projects, some of which are key and crucial for our growth and development and again, there is an urgency there that we collaborate in order to address these challenges of market failure in relation to skills. Community members and organizations in society also have a crucial role to play in promoting the spirit of volunteering so that the Vukuzenzela campaign is localized and has tangible benefits.

Communities and civil societies have a crucial role to play when it comes into addressing issues of local economic development which has remained in these last ten years very elusive for us as a country.

We still need to collaborate in earnest to address the very, very critical skills of service delivery at a local level. It is our belief that it is not good enough to blame Government and local authorities for the challenges that they face if we are not collaborating and addressing and cracking those challenges. I am again putting a question about the extent to which we have been able also to take this unique partnership that we have developed here in NEDLAC, which by the way is an envy of people in many countries, to address the whole issue of youth development and youth unemployment and of course, in that context, the issue also of the development and the protection of young men who bear the brunt of women abuse.

So as we continue along the path and along the guidelines of NEDLAC, let us please also go back and address these issues that are highlighted and the issues the other speakers will highlight, that are very crucial for us to move forward.

The commitments that we make at the GDS - some of them remain unfulfilled, and some of those are those that are most crucial. I would like to remind ourselves about the importance of the comprehensive plan for small Business development. Between Government, Labour and Business, I believe that we can track that problem if we rededicate and we do even much more to address this issue.

Another outstanding issue that is actually critical, and needs to be addressed, and progress needs to be made is that of making the right choices about how we invest the 5% of investable income in line with what we agreed at the GDS. I would like to urge that the leadership of the different Constituencies really address this issue.

And of course, the issue of skills. I don't want to believe it, but of course, it is one of those issues that we need to have tangible, and quantifiable and qualitative progress on.

I would like to then highlight another area of cooperation which needs again this collective to work together. It is the task that the President has given us to address growth such that we are able to grow beyond 6% and indeed to ensure that by 2014, we have been able to socio goals that we have set ourselves for. We are appreciative of the inputs that already has been made by WUSTAG in this regard. They already declared their interest to play a crucial role in supporting this initiative.

We do intend to talk to our colleagues in Labour because we are going to need their input in this regard, because we have an opportunity to think afresh about some of the things that we need to do in order to grow this economy.

This arises out of the fact that we continue to grapple with these challenges of poverty and unemployment but also that we have a macro economic context and stability that we need to take advantage of and do some of the things that may have been difficult for us to do in previous years when we were still building a foundation.

It therefore is time for us to think very creatively, to think about massive impacts and to think about ensuring that we take advantage about the lessons that we have learnt. We know the things that we are good at and we know the things that we are bad at, as all these Constituencies. How therefore do we take advantage of our strengths?

I would like to conclude by asking that in NEDLAC, we definitely must take advantage of the position that we have in society of being this - a collective. I want to say that commitments that were made at GDS need to be pursued.

The objectives of the National Skills Development Act needs to be achieved in spirit and in letter, the Employment Equity Act - the same. We must strive to achieve the objectives in spirit and in letter and of course the broader BEE Policy objectives also. We need to work harder to achieve them.

Our Government needs to proceed with speed to ensure that the infra structure projects that reduce cost of doing Business in South Africa are pursued. As Government, we need to make sure that we take the corrective measures where we can to address the issues of administering crisis where they impact negatively on our socio economic goals and of course, as Government, we also need to fine tune the supply site measures that enhance enterprise development, SMME development and economic development so that we can, where we cannot create jobs, at least create sustainable livelihoods where both youth, women and old people are able to live in a relatively much better environment.

The social partners need to take responsibility to engage practically in finding and implementing solutions. We take and accept their rights to protest and to be our critics and to be watchdogs. But that alone will not take this democracy forward. We need people to get their hands dirty. Its easy to criticize - its much more difficult to fix it and we invite you to be fixers as well as critics.

I would like to send the same message to organized Labour and invite you to be not an important force that takes advantage of the hard won rights that workers have won in this country, which we are also proud of, but also to say that let us also work even harder to ensure that we collaborate in finding solutions and fixing it.

Protests are a right, organizing against Government is a right but working together to make sure that the response to the issues that the protests is raising is given a much bigger goal that we need to work towards.

All the rights that we have, that we enjoy as the citizens whether we are in Government, we are members of civil society, we are organized Labour, come with responsibility and I think in these next 10 years, we must enjoy the rights, but we must abstain our involvement in ensuring that we also take responsibilities that we have.

I thank you.