Chairperson, hon Minister, Deputy Minister, hon Members of Parliament, distinguished guests, viewers at home, ... lo okhulumayo uMama uTshabalala inkosikazi kaNathi, Donga lwaMavuso, Mshengu, iNgonini yaseMavanini. [... I am Mrs Tshabalala, the wife of Nathi, Donga lwaMavuso, Mshengu, iNgonini yaseMavanini. [Clan names.]]
The ANC is extremely disturbed, in fact outraged, by the distasteful and indecent manner in which Brett Murray and the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg are displaying the person of President Jacob Zuma. After all, the President is a husband. He is also a father. He carries the responsibility of being an exemplary role model.
Chairperson, we shoulder the responsibility of building a better South Africa. We have taken on the challenge that the legacy of apartheid has left us, a legacy of disempowerment, landlessness, inequality of opportunity and millions of unemployed young people who cannot see a realistic prospect for a decent life. Confronting these realities is not about blaming the past or denying our shortcomings. Our daily deeds, as ordinary South Africans, must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, will strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and will sustain all hopes for a glorious life for all.
We recommit ourselves to accelerating the commitment made by the ANC in its election manifesto, with a view to ensuring access to quality health care and further ensuring the implementation of a comprehensive health care system.
We call on government to develop and adopt national social compacts that will bind all sectors of our society to the common agenda of developing and building the country.
Such compacts will commit all sectors to ensuring a sustainable wage bill and creating new jobs. They will further help to avoid an unavoidable wage bill for the same number of or fewer employees. This must include government, labour and business in investing in sectors that will create sustainable jobs and a balance between job creation and affordability limits, especially for small business. The widening income gap between the low-income categories and the highest paid executives is unsustainable and contributes to inequality. We want to have a country where millions more South Africans have decent employment opportunities, a country which has a modern infrastructure and vibrant economy and where the quality of life is high.
The Budget sets out a financial framework for implementing this vision, a framework that is sound and sustainable. It recognises that building South Africa is a multidecade project that must be invigorated for our capacity to grow and must include all South Africans in that growth.
The National Development Plan: Vision for 2030 and the New Growth Path identify high unemployment as a key challenge for the South African economy and outline proposals to accelerate growth and employment. Leveraging existing capacity in the public and private sector and cofinancing initiatives that have the potential to create sustainable employment are some of the ways the department has identified for stimulating employment creation. Particular emphasis will be placed on opportunities for young people to acquire skills and improve their long-term employment prospects.
The department will provide oversight over the administration of the Jobs Fund, which uses a competitive and transparent process to select projects that have demonstrable potential for self-sustaining job creation and promoting economic development. The Jobs Fund is expected to create 100 000 job opportunities by 2015. We have taken note that municipalities don't necessarily effectively take advantage of the fund; therefore, we would like to encourage municipalities to apply to and make use of the fund.
In mapping and charting the New Growth Path, which will lead to the rapid creation of jobs, ensure an equitable distribution of benefits, reduce inequality, ignite industrial development and transform rural and urban communities, the ANC-led government is mindful of the specific realities of our circumstances and the changing shape of the global economy. As Comrade Chris Hani so rightly said, and I quote:
We want to build a nation free from hunger, disease and poverty, free from ignorance, homelessness and humiliation, a country in which there is peace, security and jobs.
Chairperson, it is time to celebrate and embrace the potential of our unemployed youth, knowing that they are the future. As a result, investment in them is paramount. No one can dispute that youth unemployment in the country is a significant problem. To drive back unemployment, poverty and inequality in our country, we need to achieve higher levels of economic growth. To grow our economy, we need to produce the necessary skills. Further Education and Training colleges are important players in helping us obtain those skills. Access to higher education, Minister, as you said, for youth coming from indigent households is vital.
Discussion of the youth wage subsidy is now in the economic sector as part of a multipronged strategy to deal with youth unemployment. Stone throwing and marching will not create jobs. [Applause.] The youth wage subsidy ought to be debated on its merits and how it will affect the labour markets. Unemployment and the economy, much like other policy debates, have unfolded in this country. It has been politicised, polarised and locked into thoughtless ideological corners.
Bo mabina go tsholwa, re a tshola batho ba opela ... [They are quick to criticize after all that has been said and done ...]
... those who, out of nowhere, claim ownership of the ANC-initiated policy of the youth wage subsidy. The ANC has no intention of abandoning this policy. It is the ANC that singled out unemployment among young people as a focal challenge and devised interventions, and not only the youth subsidy! The ANC speaks about the National Youth Service, the EPWPs, and about all departments' implementing these for the youth and ensuring that we monitor and evaluate them, because those are the highest. In fact, young people are the majority.
We realise the fact that the ANC needs to implement it and all departments must ensure that young people are employed. If you listen to all the debates, you hear that there is an initiative to create jobs. Therefore, it cannot be correct, as we sit here, that the ANC wants to abandon the youth wage subsidy. We want to clarify that.
To alleviate youth unemployment over the short and long term, let us afford government and other social partners an opportunity to resolve the concerns raised by organised labour at Nedlac. We call on all to allow this process to come to its logical conclusion, and I encourage progress. Agitating young people will not resolve the issue. The point is to encourage and give them hope all the time and in everything that we do. Agitating them, taking them onto the streets and making them feel almost as if this government does not care is not fair to them. We must therefore not put the cart before the horse, correctly so. [Applause.]
Kha ri litshe u rema muri u tshe mu?uku, nahone u sa athu u anwa mitshelo. Kha ri tende zwe ra vhona nga n?ila yavhu?i. [Let's not stifle young people before they can grow and develop. Let's positively believe in what we see.]
A total of R1 billion has been granted by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan for the Department of Health to carry out the ten National Health Insurance, NHI, pilot projects. The department aims to tackle four main health problems in the country, namely: improve the life expectancy of South Africans; reduce child and maternal mortality; tackle the scourge of HIV/Aids; and improve efficiency in the health care system.
Chairperson, the number of South Africans on antiretrovirals, ARVs, has increased, while the incidence of mother-to-child infections has decreased from 8% in 2008 to 3,5% in 2011, which has saved about 30 000 babies from contracting HIV and Aids.
The phasing in of the National Health Insurance policy requires substantial reforms to address imbalances across the public and private sector and expand health professional training. The financial and organisational implications of these reforms are being jointly addressed by the Department of Health and the Treasury.
Our driving force is the assertion that health is a public good. We will forever work under the guidance of the World Health Organisation, WHO, as declared at Alma-Ata in 1978, that health is not just the absence of disease, but it is the state of good physical, social and mental wellbeing. The attainment of the highest standard of health is a most important worldwide social goal whose realisation needs action from other sectors, economic and social, in addition to the health sector.
There are preconditions for the NHI in South Africa. The quality of health care in the public sector has to improve drastically. It has to be completely overhauled. The pricing in the private health sector has to be regulated to be in line with the Constitution of the country; hence a pricing commission will be established.
To ensure that our spending on schools, hospitals and roads is not crowded out by an ever-rising interest burden, government debt needs to be managed sustainably. We do not want an unmanageable increase in expenditure, nor do we want the severe austerity measures some Western countries have had to adopt.
Our Constitution sets out specific criteria for the sharing of nationally raised revenue between national departments, provinces and municipalities. Proposals for this division are set out in the Division of Revenue Bill.
In conclusion, the ANC-led government's intention is to support economic growth and development, good governance, social progress and rising living standards through the accountable, economical, efficient, equitable and sustainable management of public finances, and the maintenance of macroeconomic and financial sector stability. Effective financial regulation of the economy is also important.
Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interests, however much baggage we carry from our past, however we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, it would be an error to say that the ANC can be stopped. Nothing stopped it 100 years ago! What makes people think that they can stop it 100 years later, on its own birthday, when the ANC is the one party on the continent that is 100 years old? [Interjections.]
The victory of the ANC-led government is a victory for the people. In the fight for a better life for all, we can build better communities together. One of the greatest African leaders, Thomas Sankara, quoted Amilcar Cabral: "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories." That is what the ANC has always preached. It does not tell lies and it does not claim any easy victories. [Interjections.]
Nga Tshiven?a ri ri u nwa ma?i ndi u tama tshisima! ?ala dza vhathu. [There is a saying in Tshivenda that you choose to work together with those you love! I thank you.]
The ANC supports the Budget Vote. Thank you. [Applause.]