Recently released economic data paints a very gloomy picture of the current economic climate that we are operating within as we pursue our programme. of radical transformation, modernisation and re-industrialisation of Gauteng city region’s economy.

Statistics South Africa recently released unemployment stats, which show that unemployment went up to a thirteen year high of 27.7% in the first quarter of 2017. Although the economy created jobs in this period (538 000), this was still not enough to absorb a work force that is growing at roughly 1.7% a year with more people actively looking for jobs than before.

According to the same stats, only 43% of adults are employed and within the 15-24 age group, only 13 out of 100 young people are employed, with millions of youth neither studying nor working. In fact, the unemployment rate amongst youth stood at 54.3% in the first quarter of 2017 and with this being the 41^st anniversary of our celebration of the heroic youth of 1976 we dare not rest on our laurels in our quest to end the social and economic marginalisation of young people.

As highlighted by Premier David Makhura in his state of the province address earlier this year our provincial economy has recorded the largest net gain in new jobs since the 2008 global crisis, with 700 000 new jobs created between 2010 and 2016. In fact, since we came into office as the fifth administration in 2014 bi-annual employment has reached 317 000, breaking the ceiling of 300 000. This was achieved despite massive job losses in both the manufacturing and mining sectors and the fact that Gauteng has the largest number of migrants coming into the province looking for economic opportunities each year, so it is in no way a small feat. So since we came into office, we have made significant strides in creating jobs, though we do acknowledge that it is still not yet sufficient to turn the unemployment tide.

Having conducted intensive research and consulted broadly with diverse economic stakeholders, the provincial government of Gauteng has come up with the Gauteng Economic Development Plan (GEDP), which focuses on sector and firm level interventions in order to unlock employment and empowerment opportunities for our people. The GEDP is geared towards growing our economy in a holistic, inclusive, equitable manner and relies on transformative partnerships between government and the private sector in the identified strategic sectors to grow our economy, create jobs and empower historically disadvantaged individuals.

Some of the partnerships that have been established with the private sector as part of the GEDP in order to create jobs include the following:

• A partnership with the capital equipment and machinery sector through the South African Capital Equipment Export Council which will create a minimum of 5000 jobs over the next three years.
• A partnership with Microsoft which will give 1 million young people the opportunity to be trained in digital skills over the next two years, a critical intervention as we head towards the fourth industrial revolution.
• A partnership with the Business Process Outsourcing sector which will facilitate the creation of 20 000 digital jobs for young people over the next three years.
• Our partnership with the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator which will reach 500 000 young people by 2019.

In addition to that, as part of our bias towards historically disadvantaged and marginalised individuals and groups in our society, we have taken a policy decision as the Gauteng provincial government that 50% of all people employed in our infrastructure projects should be youth, a momentous decision given the massive infrastructure roll out planned for Gauteng until 2019. As a reference point to show how significantly this will affect youth unemployment, we know that between 2013 and 2016 92 000 direct jobs were added to the Gauteng economy just through our infrastructure spend.

So despite the challenges caused by the ratings downgrade and sluggish global and domestic economic growth since the start of our administration in 2014, we have made significant strides in fighting poverty, unemployment and inequality, in transforming our economy, in fighting youth marginalisation and unemployment and giving our people the opportunity to create a better life for themselves. We are however aware that more indeed needs to be done and are confident that through working together, we can move Gauteng city region forward. This is the least that we can do to honour the youth of 1976 and build the kind of equitable, just society that they gave their lives for.

Lebogang Maile MPL, is the Gauteng MEC for Economic Development, Environment, Agriculture and Rural Development.

By: Lebogang Maile 

Upon hearing of the tragic recent events at Harrison Park Museum in Langlaagte, with the death of illegal miners making newspaper headlines. one was reminded of the poignant quote from Robert Tressell’s novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, “Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it’s not caused by machinery; it’s not caused by “over-production”; it’s not caused by drink or laziness; and it’s not caused by “over-population”. It’s caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolise; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air – or of the money to buy it – even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it’s right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: “It’s Their Land,” “It’s Their Water,” “It’s Their Coal,” “It’s Their Iron,” so you would say “It’s Their Air,” “These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?” And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on “Christian Duty” in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of the gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you’ll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to “justice” in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.”

The root cause of illegal mining, is an unjust economic and social system, that keeps the majority of our people, who are mostly black, out of mainstream economic activity, ownership and control.  We are a constitutional democracy with a government that believes in upholding the rule of law and can never be seen to be condoning acts of criminality, but we have to have a more nuanced analysis of the reasons why people risk their lives, mining in dangerous areas in order to just eke out a decent living for themselves.

We live in one of the most unequal countries in the world, where the majority of the wealth and resources are owned and controlled by an elite few, along mostly racial lines because of our divided past. Until we deal with these root causes that cause the majority of our people to be kept out of economic ownership, to be casualised as labourers and to suffer the daily indignity of living in subhuman conditions, problems such as illegal mining will continue to plague our country. We need to form a social pact with all the different stakeholders in society, in order to bring down monopoly capital and give our people greater access to wealth creation, asset-building and economic ownership opportunities. We need sustainable, equitable, job creating, inclusive economic growth in order to solve many of the social ills we are plagued with as a country.

Government established the Gauteng Crime Intelligence Committee on Illegal Mining in order to stop illegal operations. The aim is to destroy the syndicates who are behind these illegal operations as well as the markets they’re supplying.  Government is actively looking to support small-scale mining and the huge potential it possesses to absorb greater numbers of people in productive employment. This will have the effect of breaking down monopoly capital’s control on our natural resources and giving our people a better chance of earning a livelihood in a decent, dignified manner.

To quote from Robert Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists again, “Every man who is not helping to bring about a better state of affairs for the future is helping to perpetuate the present misery, and is therefore the enemy of his own children. There is no such thing as being neutral: we must either help or hinder.” It is in all in our hands to build a just, equitable, inclusive economy and society that will have opportunity for all of its people and not just an elite few. That is the only long term solution to putting an end to unwanted ills like illegal mining.

Lebogang Maile is the MEC of Economic Development, Environment, Agriculture and Rural Development in Gauteng.

By: Lebogang Maile

On Monday 26^th February 2018, Gauteng Premier David Makhura delivered the State of the Province address. (SOPA), inspired by the thematic message of hope and renewal from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address. In it, he not only gave a reflective account of progress made since 2014, but also re-emphasised President Ramaphosa’s message that we want to be there and lend a hand to deliver on our electoral commitment and mandate given to us by our people.

We want to be guided by our revolutionary obligation and zeal to deliver a Gauteng city region that real belongs to all. We want to be there for those in the townships, the informal settlements, in hostels, farmworkers and everyone else who remains marginalised and on the periphery of economic activity and society within Gauteng.

In reflecting on the significant strides we have made since coming into office, on a ticket of radical transformation, modernisation and re-industrialisation as the fifth administration in Gauteng in 2014, one is immediately drawn to the words uttered by Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of one of the world’s most iconic companies, Apple Inc. when he said, “I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why, because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.”

As a government of revolutionary democrats, from the onset we set out on a radical path geared towards structurally re-aligning our economy, redressing past imbalances and creating an inclusive economy that creates opportunities for historically disadvantaged individuals to work and live in a better quality environment, grow their asset base, build new wealth and participate significantly as well as meaningfully within the mainstream economy.

Rolling out a revolutionary programme of such immense proportions is much harder and more taxing than looking to make incremental gains as Steve Jobs reminds us, especially given the patience that our people have shown in the past twenty plus years in their quest for the better life that the post 94 dispensation promised them.

It is also, as Jobs once again reminds us, a path filled with many critics who will inadvertently be waiting in the wings to constantly tell you that you have failed or are failing, hence one is never surprised to hear such constant criticisms from opposition benches and certain groups within society. It is “the road less travelled” to use a famous cliché by poet Robert Frost.

As Premier David Makhura highlighted in his State of the Province address earlier this week, despite the naysayers and doomsday prophets who thrived in the difficult environment that we have just recently come out of as a nation, we have indeed made much progress in our quest to build a more just, equitable, inclusive society for all our people.

Through our Tshepo 1 Million partnership with the private sector and other stakeholders, we have been training and equipping our young people in digital skills in order to prepare them to participate within the mainstream economy, especially as we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the era of the knowledge economy.

The total number of youth to have benefitted from the programme since 2014 is 450 000. The programme is geared towards deliberately reaching out to marginalised and excluded people, with each young person who benefits from the programme supporting an average of 4-5 people and 41% of youth within the programme having children of their own.

Not only that, we have also been the leading province in deploying digital technology for learning and teaching as well as created platforms for innovation and entrepreneurship through our roll out of eKasi Labs and partnerships with Gauteng-based universities, research institutions and other knowledge economy catalysts for skills development as well as investment in research and development.

We have invested in catalytic, strategic economic infrastructure in order to rebuild and develop the productive capacity of our township economy, with 7 new industrial and business parks developed, 16 more in progress and another 10 industrial parks refurbished.

Infrastructure investment is integral to our social and economic transformation agenda and is right at the heart of our industrialisation drive within the city region. In the period under consideration, since we came into office +R30 billion was spent on infrastructure investment, with an average annual growth rate of 20.7%, which is the fastest growth rate in the country.

Through the implementation of the Gauteng Economic Development Plan with its sector based approach we have managed to create industry action labs in the following areas: capital equipment, mining and mineral beneficiation, automotive, Information and Communications Technology, Business Process Services and steel sectors.

These engagements have not only had the impact of saving jobs in highly pressurised industries such as the steel sector, but have also created transformative initiatives such as the South African Capital Equipment Export Council/Gauteng Growth and Development Agency partnership which is equipping 30 black industrialists from within the province. We have been able to create access to new markets through exciting initiatives such as the Zambian hub, which will give our entrepreneurs steady markets within which to sell their goods.

Progress has been made in modernising our services with online systems being implemented in provincial agencies such as the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller and the Gauteng Liquor Board and through our one stop investment shop, the Gauteng Investment Centre we have managed to facilitate investment that contributes significantly to the GDP of the provincial economy.

Our procurement policy has contributed largely to Township Economy Revitalisation, with over R17 billion now being spent on township based enterprises. This means that our spend on township enterprises has increased by 55% per annum. We are working at expanding this spend campaign to SOEs and the private sector through partnerships.

24487 SMMEs where supported along with 5510 cooperatives, indicating our belief in the importance of small businesses to the growth and transformation of our dynamic, modern economy. 38 township manufacturing projects where funded and 70 township tourism nodes were promoted in order to develop manufacturing capacity within our townships and use township tourism experiences with its rich heritage to grow township tourism.

We completed our asset register for government owned land and property and from that, we are going to lease out suitably located properties for township businesses, a critical intervention since the land question is one of the biggest challenges that township enterprises and black businesses are faced with.

The agricultural sector is a core part of our industrialisation drive and in order to increase our agro-processing capacity, we managed to build 8 agri-parks using ground-breaking hydroponics technology in some of them and we supported 60 agribusinesses with access to markets.

We have managed to roll out agro-processing machinery like abattoir equipment, vegetable cutting machines, cold trailers, moringa pellet machines, feed mills and egg grading machines. Agripreneurs and co-operatives in the Agriparks and surrounding the Agriparks where supported with vegetable inputs.

8235 households benefitted from agriculture food security initiatives, with a further 2242 smallholder farmers supported with agricultural advisory services as we sought to help them build sustainable agricultural enterprises in order to transform the sector.

In order to broaden access of veterinary services to all communities, we launched a project to roll out mobile clinic veterinary services. We pioneered the movable and mobile abattoir project in 2016, procuring 4 mobile abattoirs, with an additional 6 mobile abattoirs currently under procurement.

With regards to land reform, we have completed phase 1 of the land audit, helping us get a better understanding of land ownership patterns within the province and we are currently busy with phase 2, which is the final step before we embark on our progressive program of land expropriation without compensation, in line with current constitutional prerogatives.

Much progress has been made in building and transforming our economy, yet much more still needs to be done in terms of promoting localisation and manufacturing, in supporting black businesses to enter other economic sectors and to build new economic nodes, in linking our SMMEs, township enterprises and black businesses with supply chains of major corporations.

All of this remains a work in progress as we are into the final year of our term in office and requires us, in looking back in order to more impactfully go forward, to embrace the attitude encapsulated by the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, “Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

By: Lebogang Maile

During his inspiring maiden State of the Nation Address (SoNA) president Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa correctly observed that we remain a highly unequal society. in which poverty and prosperity are still defined by race and gender. This was a very commendable and bold statement coming from president Ramaphosa, given his standing and position in society, which signals a “new dawn” in tackling the serious challenges faced by our country and its people, with poverty, inequality and unemployment still at unacceptable levels.

President Ramaphosa’s bold statement also affirmed the governing party’s seriousness and commitment to advancing a more radical socio-economic transformation agenda, informed by resolutions taken at the watershed 54^th national conference in Nasrec.

Interestingly this “new dawn” and refreshing leadership, emerges at a time we are celebrating Nelson Mandela’s centennial birthday and looking to honour and uphold his great legacy, as part of a generation of leaders that ushered us into a democratic era. One of the main areas of contention that we must of necessity consider, is the socio-economic impact on contemporary South Africa, of the compromises that were reached in order to bring us to the post-94, democratic dispensation.

In his seminal work, A History of Inequality in South Africa: 1652-2002, recently deceased academic and renowned progressive political economist professor Sampie Terreblanche argues that, “a momentous political transformation should be urgently complemented by an equally momentous socio-economic transformation in order to deracialise the economy, get rid of the ugly remnants of racial capitalism, and end poverty and destitution.”

An objective analysis of the socio-economic situation in contemporary South Africa leads one to conclude that this is one of the things that we have not managed to achieve in this new period, despite the many advances that we can be proud of. Since 1994, we find ourselves faced with the problem of a new political system, which to a large extent still maintains the old economic order.

Professor Terreblanche further posits that in order to bring about this socio-economic transformation, white South Africans (corporately) should acknowledge that they were beneficiaries of colonial segregation as well as apartheid and as a result they should be prepared to make the necessary conciliatory and restitutional sacrifices that will redress past imbalances and help us build the united, prosperous, non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous South Africa that Mandela gave his life to creating.

He further argues that the democratic compromises that ushered us into the post 94 era, fundamentally consisted of a pact between the new political elite and the old corporate order, which in effect led to the increased marginalisation and pauperisation of the impoverished black majority. His solution is that we should launch new and radical economic policies whose primary aim will be to redress the hundreds of years of racial oppression that have led to the subjugation of the black majority.

It is in line with this reasoning that at its 54^th national conference, the African National Congress resolved to commit itself to, “fundamental and radical socioeconomic transformation of society to create a better life for all South Africans.” This is a renewed commitment to fundamentally, systemically and structurally transform the economy of South Africa so that it loses its colonial era racial and gender composition of ownership and management of our economy.

Radical socio-economic transformation is an existential necessity for us as a people, if we are to ever uphold and honour Nelson Mandela’s nation building legacy. It should not be seen as divisive, or as a threat to one race as opposed to another, but a necessary evolution in the life of this young nation as we continue on this nation building project we have been embarking upon.

Radical socio-economic transformation is about economic inclusiveness, historical redress, redistribution (income, wealth and asset redistribution). It is not a zero-sum game where we have to choose between the interests of business as opposed to the interests of the rest of society or between those of blacks and whites. It consists of a social compact, as stated by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation address between the various stakeholders and interest groups within society in order to build a new economic order that will offer opportunity for advancement and upward mobility to all, and not just an elite few.

In his well-known speech, The Historical Injustice, delivered in Ottawa, Canada in 1978 former President Thabo Mbeki highlights this fact when he states that, “the anti-thesis to white supremacy, exclusiveness and arrogance is not a black version of the same practice. In the physical world, black might indeed be the opposite of white, but in the world of social systems, social theory and practice have as much to do with skin pigmentation as has the birth of the children with the stork. To connect the two is to invent a fable with the conscious or unconscious purpose of hiding reality. The act of negating the theory and practice of white apartheid racism, the revolutionary position is exactly to take the issue of colour, race, national and sex differentiation out of the sphere of rational human thinking and behaviour and thereby expose all colour, race, nation and sex prejudice as irrational.”

It is not that we are trying to posit black capitalism as the anti-thesis to white capitalism, as neither of these have any redeeming features as Mbeki highlights in this epic speech. Rather, we want to break the power of monopoly over all sectors of our economy, with highly concentrated ownership patterns where a few large firms (mainly white-owned and controlled for historically obvious reasons) control entire value chains and leave no room for small businesses to be able to enter and compete. This of course stifles innovation and keeps our economy from growing, diversifying and transforming as well as creating jobs so that we can give our people the better life that they deserve.

Through radical socio-economic transformation we want to use the state as a vehicle to advance the National Democratic Revolution and build the South Africa that Mandela and his generation gallantly fought for so many years to bring to pass. It is about bringing about the quickest and most fundamental social and economic change so that we can indeed become a “Rainbow Nation” on “whom the sun never sets” to use a phrase from Mandela’s 1994 inauguration speech.

• Lebogang Maile is Gauteng MEC of Economic Development, Environment, Agriculture and Rural Development as well as a Provincial Working Committee (PWC) member of the ANC in Gauteng.

Over the past few days the African Development Bank in partnership with the Gauteng Provincial Government co-hosted the inaugural African Investment Forum (AIF), a platform to facilitate intra-African transactions as well as promote much needed investment.

This event is significant, in that it brought together stakeholders from all over the continent, in order to address our continent’s most pertinent socio-economic challenges through investment promotion and facilitation as well as providing further evidence of the success of our bidding and hosting strategy as a provincial government, with all the economic spinoffs that come with it. The AIF further shows the seriousness with which our government is approaching the investment drive of US$ 100 billion over five years announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year in order to stimulate economic growth, create jobs and improve the quality of life of our people.

The continent continues to attract high levels of interest as an investment destination, and is in fact now considered the second most attractive investment destination in the world. With 6 of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies in the world in 2018 emanating from Africa, the AIF once again positively affirmed our belief in the critical nexus between investment and economic growth towards long term economic development.

Gauteng, as the economic hub of the country and the continent has positioned itself as a leading player in the drive towards the sustainable growth and development of the continent, the re-industrialisation of the continent, greater regional and continental integration as well as increased intra-African trade and investment.

An example of this is our focus in the Gauteng Economic Development Plan on developing and enhancing our agro-processing capacity from an understanding that agriculture, which remains a backbone of many African economies as well as being the largest employer, holds huge potential to provide solutions to our socio-economic problems.

Agro-processing has the potential to become an industrial impetus for Africa and with its strong upstream and downstream linkages as well as being a subdivision of the manufacturing sector, can play a significant role in reviving manufacturing on the continent. With the increased demand for value-added goods, it can also help us address the need for further economic diversification and value-addition as well as tackle the challenge of food security by turning Africa from being a net importer of food to a net exporter, given the fact that the continent contains 65% of the world’s most arable, uncultivated land.

Foreign direct investment in agriculture and agribusiness has experienced enormous growth in the past few years, with investors seizing the opportunity to invest in the continent’s largely undeveloped agro-processing potential. It is such kind of investments, with developmental and socio-economic impact that we are pursuing through the AIF. Another sector which has experienced incredible growth on the continent is the ICT sector, as the continent readies itself to become a notable player within the Digital Age. Through the AIF, we are working towards bringing in catalytic investments in such sectors, as well as in big infrastructure projects, which are material in terms of removing some of the bottlenecks to economic development that countries around the continent are faced with.

Africa’s GDP has expanded impressively over the past decade, with major technological advancements, better cooperation between the public and private sectors, improvements in health and welfare amongst other things playing a critical role but there are still many challenges to be overcome in order to take the continent towards its ultimate developmental objects and it is through initiatives such as the AIF that we can come together and find common cause as Africans in pursuit of what has been dubbed the “African Century.”

A wise sage once stated that, “the opportunity of a lifetime, must be taken within the lifetime of that opportunity.” There is a window of opportunity for us as a continent to work together, build interdependency and develop the capacity that we need in order to attain the objectives so well articulated by former President Thabo Mbeki in his address at the United Nations University in April 1998, “We must succeed to rebuild and reconstruct our economies, achieve high and sustained rates of growth, reduce unemployment, and provide a better life for the people, a path on which we have embarked.

We must succeed to meet the needs of the people so as to end poverty and improve the quality of life by ensuring access to good education, adequate health care, decent homes, clean water and modern sanitation, and so on, again a process on which we have embarked.” Through the deals and transactions that have been concluded at the AIF, we have indeed taken a quantum leap towards a “New Dawn” for South Africa and the rest of the continent.