Chairperson, fellow members, Minister, the hon Mufamadi was correct in pointing out that the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme, RDP, was our inaugural democratic vision for economic growth. Later, fearing sovereignty-compromising dependence on international capital, a macroeconomic stabilisation effort the Growth, Employment and Redistribution, Gear, project came into being, which was aimed at keeping debt levels low and maintaining our national integrity.
More than a decade later, in the 2012 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, the National Treasury said that we need to rebuild the narrow fiscal space that we have today by stabilising our worryingly high debts levels, by ruthlessly combating corruption and by putting the economy on a growth trajectory with well-targeted reforms. Both Treasury and the National Development Plan, NDP, talk about creating growth at somewhere between 5% and 6% in the longer term. Leftist critics see the policy progression from the RDP to Gear to the National Development Plan as a narrative of betrayal - the story of how the pro-labour, expansionary, macroeconomic agenda of growth through redistribution was hijacked by pro-business, fiscally orthodox, neoliberal policies.
The NDP has also been rejected by some for its neoliberal proposals and abandonment of the RDP. This battle reflects conflict between the ANC and its alliance partner, Cosatu, over how precisely to engage with global capitalism and the labour market, in particular. [Interjections.] Cosatu styles itself as a "class-oriented trade union federation whose strategic objective is to achieve socialism". It favours economic policies that discipline capital, promote collective bargaining and minimum-wage setting and protect jobs from disruptive trade and capital flows.
For its part, the SA Communist Party prevaricates intellectually. Like Cosatu, the SACP is opposed, in principle ... [Interjections.] ... to ANC policies that have given more space to market forces, notably privatisation and trade- and capital-account liberalisation, and it has been successfully opposed to our wage-setting machinery. This has effectively blocked various attempts to boost employment through labour-market reforms or to facilitate social accords between labour and capital that seek to restrain wage growth. Now we are caught in a situation where the National Union of Mineworkers, NUM, has effectively declared war on the mining sector, making unreasonably high wage claims, while companies like Amplats are forced to restructure operations at the cost of thousands of jobs to our economy. [Interjections.]
We have an unco-ordinated policy environment lacking in presidential leadership and promoting rising labour costs in the face of tight fiscal and monetary policies and falling tariff protection. Other countries that liberalised their trade regimes under rigid labour market conditions and fiscal austerity face similar job-loss problems. Facing prospects of stagflation and persistently high unemployment, the NDP has revived the call first made by Gear for a social accord to restrain wage growth - and organised labour is, once again, mobilising against it.
Now, one consequence of this is chronic youth unemployment. Sitting at 51,6%, youth unemployment is approximately double that of the general adult population. Indicators suggest that unemployment is generally higher among young women than young men. Most troubling of course, is the number of young South Africans - 2,8 million in all - who are neither in work nor at places of learning.
However, while the left has a lot to answer for keeping people out of jobs, the right cannot expect the workers alone to swallow the bitter medicine of austerity. This government is fat with excess, and there are significant pockets of corruption. The private sector has an artificially small market of CEOs that have driven up executive pay. Universities and professional associations run cartels that restrict the number of medical doctors, engineers and professionals that are educated.
May I finish by saying that we must swallow the medicine of austerity together; consume less together; save more together; work harder together; and sell our country proudly to investors both locally and globally, together. Thank you very much. [Time expired.] [Interjections.]