Continuing his charm offensive to reassure businessmen and the investment community that his ascent to the leadership of the ruling party signifies no threat to the economy, Jacob Zuma on Thursday faced the bulls, bears and stags of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange.
He spoke at a luncheon organised by Jayendra Naidoo, chairperson of Macquarie First South, and spoke about job creation, the fight against crime, skilled immigration and the electricity crisis.
The African National Congress (ANC) president said that based on the current economic forecasts, South Africa could expect to continue to create many jobs, particularly for skilled workers.
“Thousands however, will remain unemployed, and this is the group we must focus on,” he said.
He told his audience that the ANC conference in Polokwane confirmed that the creation of jobs must be the primary focus of economic policy through targeted and direct interventions.
“Our development finance institutions and regulatory bodies need to be sensitive to this objective,” he said.
“In government procurement policies, industrial and trade policy reforms, and in our macroeconomic policy stance, we need to be alive to these goals.”
He also spoke of the need to consider fresh ideas to improve job creation, for example, by the state helping young people to get their first formal-sector job.
“By creating the right incentives for young people to be employed by companies, young people can gain vital workplace skills, experience and networks necessary for formal-sector employment,” he said.
On skilled immigration, he said that South Africans had to come to terms with the fact that the more skills in the economy, the more jobs could be created.
“While we do the hard work to improve our education and skills outcomes, which will take many years to accomplish, our government needs to ensure that the economy has sufficient skills to expand,” he said.
Business Against Crime lauded
Zuma said there was consensus that the level of crime in South Africa was simply unacceptable. The Polokwane conference resolved to sharpen the anti-crime campaign this year, Zuma said, and he praised the business community for demonstrating what a difference concrete action could make.
“The achievements of Business Against Crime, in its support for the criminal justice system, are remarkable,” he said.
“There are many innovations that have been introduced in prisons and other criminal justice centres, through the work of Business Against Crime. We applaud such patriotic duty.”
He agreed that South Africans were concerned about the supply of electricity. And he said, grimly, that there was no doubt that investment in the sector should have been made earlier, and the reasons for this failure would have to be addressed at a later stage.
But, he said, the investments were being made now. “Our government is developing a national response plan which will introduce short-term measures to balance the demand for energy with the supply, and this while the work to bring more supply is fast-tracked as much as possible.”
He said the electricity crisis was a turning point. “There will no doubt be a cost to the economy in the short term,” he said.
“But let us make this a positive turning point for South Africa’s use of electricity in the longer term. We have become accustomed to using electricity very inefficiently and in a manner that is environmentally damaging.”
Zuma said the need for an effective planning centre within government was made even clearer by the electricity failure, as this problem was clearly a failure of planning in the late 1990s, and he noted that the ANC had called for the creation of an institutional centre for government-wide economic planning, and uniform and high entrance requirements for the recruitment of public servants. – I-Net Bridge