The corporate sector is the primary creator of jobs and work opportunities, said businessman Tokyo Sexwale in a speech released on Tuesday.
”The extent to which this sector is treated or maltreated, welcomed or unwelcomed, by far determines its continued appetite [for] and commitment to capital expansion and job creation,” he said.
Sexwale, who has confirmed to being lobbied to join the African National Congress (ANC) presidential succession race, was addressing an ANC fund-raising dinner in Cape Town on Monday night.
He said the process of economic growth is premised on an uneasy partnership between labour and capital, but it is a function of the state to create an enabling environment for growth.
An additional role of the government together with its partners in the economy — workers and capital — is to put in place a social plan to support those who are on the fringes of the economy. ”But it is the corporate sector that is the primary creator of jobs and work opportunities.”
Sexwale said it should be stated at the same time that workers are the primary creators of value. Without them, natural resources, tools and machines cannot by themselves create commodities. ”It therefore stands to reason that the capital-labour partnership is uneasy for the reason that it is the quintessential example of the unity and struggle of the opposites.”
While labour’s objective is to maximise wages, capital aims to maximise profit, Sexwale said. ”The growth of our economy therefore lies in the ability of all parties to manage these production relation tensions while government develops and maintains the requisite climate.”
Sexwale said it stands to reason that the continuous building of human capacity is a key driver of economic growth. This is something to which the developmental state has to pay special attention.
”However, again on its own, government cannot adequately achieve all the milestones of development towards providing a high and better quality of life for its citizens,” he said.
The extent to which the state, labour and capital make common cause will determine the success in creating conditions for sustainable employment and growth.
”A word of caution. The developmental state in its application of interventionist measures ought to avoid being instructionist and/or obstructionist, a situation which can easily result in market failures, and consequently greater impoverishment of the very people we intend to liberate from the clutches of poverty,” Sexwale said.
”This calls for wisdom and a proper understanding of where and how in our world such state intervention resulted in successes or where it ended in dismal failure.” — Sapa