The government is looking for skilled white South Africans at home and abroad to help implement its accelerated growth plan, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the newspaper that the government has ”messed up” communicating its affirmative-action policy, and insisted that South Africans — including whites who took retrenchment packages to make way for transformation — will be the first recruits in an organised search for talent to drive the country’s infrastructure programme.
This was in a wide-ranging interview with the newspaper, where she also promised to remove logjams holding back development.
”In South Africa, there is no room for an eight-to-four civil servant. The stakes are too high, the needs are too great,” she said.
The deputy president urged private-sector companies battling for approval to import critical skills to give her details of specific cases and promised to take them up at Cabinet level.
She also said the government will investigate fully recent United Nations allegations of complicity in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. — Sapa