President Cyril Ramaphosa claims that a number of effective interventions are required for the nation to lessen the effects of the triple difficulties of unemployment, poverty, and inequality.
These interventions include luring in more investment and strengthening the state’s capacity.
“Our economy has not been expanding at a rate that would allow us to significantly reduce inequality, unemployment, and poverty.
“Government alone cannot turn around our economy and generate the millions of jobs that are required.
All social actors must be mobilised in order to create a comprehensive programme, the President added.
On Monday, the President addressed the nation in his weekly message.
The social partners have been meeting with a team led by the ministers of employment and labour, trade, industry and competition, and finance to outline the priorities that must be included in the new social agreement during the past few months.
According to President Ramaphosa, the team has been meeting regularly with social partners as part of this work.
“A social compact framework has been created. It specifies priority initiatives to boost investment and growth, boost employment, unleash the private sector’s dynamism, defend workers’ rights, strengthen assistance for the unemployed, and combat extreme poverty, the President added.
The President emphasised that comprehensive agreement on a single purpose, the plan to achieve it, and a commitment by all parties to its implementation are necessary for a new consensus to be successfully established.
“We have observed what occurs when such agreements are signed with great pomp but are not fully implemented.
“This time, we must improve in order to guarantee better results and impact and to ensure that deployment is successful.
Even if doing so requires delaying the signing of the new comprehensive social compact until all social partners have agreed to their respective contributions to society’s advancement,” he remarked.
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The proposed compact expands on many of the core principles of the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, including job creation, accelerating structural reform and growth-enhancing measures, expanding mass public employment and social protection, and promoting economic inclusion through increased entrepreneurial activity.
According to President Ramaphosa, the social compact needs a defined set of initiatives and a reliable implementation strategy more than anything else.
While the government must work to make it easier for businesses to invest, put in place social safety nets to protect the most helpless members of society, and lead programmes to end poverty, businesses must also take proactive efforts.
“In such a limited economic climate, organised business and labour must be willing to negotiate the trade-offs necessary to enact growth-enhancing initiatives.
In our towns, there has to be more coordination between the government and civil society organisations about programmes to reduce poverty, he said.
The President stated that a series of catalytic initiatives will have the greatest impact and that South Africa does not need yet another strategy to address the issues it is now facing.
To avoid setting ourselves up for failure given the complexity of the issues, the President remarked, “We all want to see a consensus finalised, but it is vitally critical that genuine consensus is obtained among all social partners.”
Government is making progress with its economic stimulus package.
The President reaffirmed that the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP) is still being carried out.
He said that all economic stakeholders are supporting efforts to expand the economy and generate jobs.
President Ramaphosa emphasised that tremendous progress has been made since the SONA in putting economic reforms into practise, extending public and social employment programmes in an unprecedented way, striving to bring additional power generation capacity online, and mobilising new investment.
There is consensus among the social partners that the social compact must be a clear road map to achieving increased levels of equality, employment, and shared wealth.
Instead of criticising one another, he remarked, “What we now need is to work together with greater urgency and purpose to achieve that mission.”