Don’t fool the nation

Don’t fool the nation

By BRIAN KAJENGO

Cape Town, 18^th March 2014:- The theatre of politics indulged in by the Democratic Alliance and the African National Congress as both parties stage marches for jobs ahead of the election shows that neither party is prepared to acknowledge that only a comprehensive overhaul of education and skills development, with an emphasis on artisan and technical skills training will result in sustainable employment.

“Both parties are trying to fool citizens into believing that they will somehow magically create millions of jobs when neither has the honesty to tell citizens of this country that neither can sustainably create the jobs they promise,” says Agang SA President Dr Mamphela Ramphele.

According to Ramphele, this amounts to a cynical use of the campaign platform to again make empty promises to citizens and in particular, poor and unemployed South Africans.

“What we need to do is to overhaul our education system and place far more emphasis on training artisans and producing other technically skilled people,” she says.

Ramphele says that to pin the creation of millions of jobs on infrastructure investments and projects is to ignore the longer term needs of the country and to further trap citizens in a poverty prison.

She points out that infrastructure projects have a finite life and unless more long term plans implemented, workers forced to return, unskilled, to unemployment when these projects end.

“What we need is to make education work, to demand excellence from learners and to ensure they are able to reach their full potential. Only then will they become competitive in the job market and be able to study further and acquire the skills they need. A pass mark of 30% does not ensure our school leavers are in any way competitive,” says Ramphele.

“We also need to ensure we invest in widespread skills develop, and in particular the training of artisans so that we can speed up industrialisation, attract investors, and ensure skilled South Africans have the option of either working for employers or starting their own businesses,” says Ramphele.

An investment in artisan training also has the effect of bringing skills development closer to business needs, she says.

“South Africa is in a position to fund this widespread skills development programme by simply scrapping the wasteful SETA’s and saving R5 billion to R6 billion a year and retaining the 1% investment businesses are already making in skills development,” she adds.

What is required though, is political will to make hard decisions, and a commitment to empowering citizens, to ensuring they are not dependent on hand-outs from the state in the long term. Neither the governing party nor the official opposition appear to have this commitment nor the willingness to make these hard decisions,” says Ramphele