Mr Speaker, I hope that you'll remember that minute that she took from my time. Thank you, sir.
Hon President, Deputy President and hon members, the National Development Plan identified a number of key problems that our country needs to deal with if it is to advance.
We are particularly attracted to the identification of the question of poor education as impacting negatively on skills development in the country. Our own approach is that, unless South Africa can transform its human resource element, unless we can transform the lives of many of the citizens of our country who are not only unemployed but unemployable, we will not be able to tackle effectively the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Mr President, we had hoped that a major part of the government's approach on this question would focus effectively on dealing with this question of training and education. For very many centuries, African people in this country have been denied opportunities of access to education and training, therefore making them less effective and less productive than what the country required them to be.
This is a singular issue that we need to address more than any other, because unless we indeed address it, we will not be able to expand the economy, we will not be able to make our people capable of dragging themselves out of the poverty trap, the backwardness and the squalor in which they find themselves. It is important that we return to this issue.
This is not to say, Mr President, that the issue you raised on infrastructure development is not of any significance. It is important. All it can do at the moment is arrest, for a certain period of time, the deterioration and perhaps assist in keeping stability, but it does not eliminate the fact that we continue to go deeper into a crisis of the unemployable and unemployability, which, at one stage or another, will simply not be controllable by us as a country. So, I would like to say that it is important that we should return to and revisit this issue from time to time.
This issue of unemployability, Mr President, is vital. A number of the social tensions that we are faced with in our country today have to do with unemployability. Many people that come to this country from other countries, especially from our continent, come armed with abilities and skills that our citizens don't have. When, therefore, they are taken in by the market, this leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of our own citizens who feel that their African brothers and sisters coming into this country are taking their jobs, because it is not immediately clear to them that this happens simply because we have not dealt with this incapacity to be able to take advantage of the opportunities which our country presents them with.
I would also like to say, Mr President, that you announced a very interesting and attractive programme of infrastructure development. Indeed, you spoke to the issues of the development of dams, roads and so on. These are vital investments and areas of work, because not only do you invest, but you are also able to realise returns in the years that lie ahead from such investments. At this time, when South Africa's deficit has grown to more than 3,5% already, we need investment that will give us returns because the money we have borrowed we have to pay back tomorrow. If we invest in investment that will give us returns, we place ourselves in a position in which we can meet the challenges of paying those monies plus the interest on it.
But there is a category of the investment you announced that I am not sure exactly how we are going to deal with. Is that also going to come from the expenditure for this year? You announced the investment in celebrating our history, building statues and graves and so on. These are very important elements of our history because, like all nations, we must do something about these issues.
Nevertheless, the question that I would like to pose is this: At a time when our deficit has grown and is growing at the rate at which it is, is the timing right? If we are borrowing money and investing it in those enterprises that are consuming and not giving returns, it has the effect of deepening our deficit. Is this the right timing? Our study and our look at some of the expenditure patterns of various other countries is that they tend to prioritise these issues in years in which their economies are performing very well and when there is surplus after national expenditure for year after year. Then you will have a surplus that you can apply to these consumptives or projects. It seems that we may perhaps get more light shed on this from the Minister of Finance when he indicates how much of our expenditure will go towards infrastructure that gives returns afterwards, as opposed to infrastructure that will not.
One of the issues we think needs a clear explanation from the President when he responds to our speeches relates, of course, to the issue of the youth subsidy scheme. You announced an amount of R5 billion to subsidise youth employment. The whole nation is now aware that, as things stand, there is a problem, because organised labour is concerned that such subsidisation will encourage employers to go for subsidised youth.
On the other hand, there is the problem of organised labour that may find that it is neglected and even dismissed. This tension seems to be the issue that has contributed to objections being raised by organised labour and the leaders of organised labour in that this scheme should not be implemented. I thought that you would be able to say something to us, Mr President, on this issue. Will we see the expenditure of this R5 billion in a manner in which it will answer this problem and ensure that we are able to benefit from the R5 billion?
Again, from the point of view of Cope, we would think that this money would have been best spent in investment and on training. Freedom, after all, must not be understood and should never have been understood as a season of gifts. It should be understood as an opportunity in which those who were denied opportunities of training and education are now rid of the chains that prevented them from getting this education; that therefore freedom means expanding to the fullest your talents, our children's talents. This is so that our children can leave if they can't get employment in this country and get employment elsewhere. If there are no businesses to employ them, they can start their own businesses. They would then be able to build homes and take their mothers and fathers out of the shacks and let them grow old in proper homes built by their own children. [Applause.]
With this R5 billion we must give to the children of this country - the children who are poor and who have nothing - training and education, something nobody can take away from them, something which, even if they went to other countries, they could use to earn an income and to send this income back to their motherland. Many are exporting their skilled labour to this country. When they earn their money here, they send it back to their own countries. But we are not preparing our children ...