Addressing the students and teachers at a University of Zululand graduation ceremony in Empangeni on Friday, African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, who is also the university chancellor, said that nation-building is not only about people’s attitudes towards one another.
“We must understand that nation-building requires that we tackle the material differences between our people,” he said.
“We cannot have a united nation when a significant section of our society remains in poverty, or do not have access to quality education, or still live without basic services like water or housing. We cannot have a united nation when the bulk of the country’s wealth is retained in the hands of an extremely small minority.”
Zuma spoke about the need for advancing education to improve the skills of the country.
“Apartheid had many devastating effects. But its deliberate suppression of the potential of our people was among the worst, and most damaging,” he said. “By determining that black South Africans should be prevented from doing anything more than the most basic manual labour, the apartheid regime severely stunted the development of our society.”
He said that the Polokwane conference of his party determined that education should be the central focus of its social-transformation programme for the next five years.
“We are therefore examining all aspects of our education system, from early childhood development to higher education, from literacy campaigns to the training of artisans and learnerships,” he said.
“While we work to meet our immediate skills needs through initiatives like the joint initiative on priority skills acquisition [Jipsa], we must build a school system that prioritises quality, access and excellence.”
Education is key to the effort to create decent work opportunities, he said, and he added: “As we strengthen the capacity of the state to intervene in the development of key economic sectors, as we invest in economic infrastructure and act to remove obstacles to growth, we must not lose sight of the absolute necessity of developing the skills of our people.” — I-Net Bridge