Mr Speaker, Mr President, Mr Deputy President, hon Ministers and hon members, there is a "newspeak", a new language, about Africa today; it's about hopeful Africa. This "newspeak" resonates directly with the President's call to us to create a new story for South Africa.
The President said last week on Thursday that we would begin to write a new story about South Africa, the story of how, working together, we drove back unemployment and reduced economic inequality and poverty. I would like to suggest here that we can do this best if we look carefully at what is happening on our continent and recognise this as an opportunity to grow our own economy and bring prosperity to all our people.
The Economist of December last year lead with the story entitled, "Africa rising, Africa's hopeful economies". This is a dramatic change in tune for The Economist, which in 2000 labelled Africa "the hopeless continent". I quote from the article:
The politics of the continent's Mediterranean shore may have dominated headlines this year, but the new boom south of the Sahara will affect more lives. It continues:
From Ghana in the west to Mozambique in the south, Africa's economies are consistently growing faster than those of almost any other region in the world. At least a dozen have expanded more than 6% a year for six years or more and Ethiopia will grow 7,5% this year, without a drop of oil to export. Once a byword for famine, it is now the world's 10th largest producer of livestock.
Further on, the article says:
Since The Economist regrettably ...
That itself says it -
... labelled Africa "the hopeless continent" a decade ago, a profound change has taken hold. Labour productivity has been rising. It is now growing by, on average, 2,7% a year. Trade between Africa and the rest of the world has increased by 200% since 2000. Inflation dropped from 22% in 1990 to 8% in the past decade. Foreign debts declined by a quarter, budget deficits by two-thirds. In eight of the past 10 years, according to the World Bank, sub-Saharan growth has been faster than East Asia's. ...
And the continent's impressive growth looks likely to continue. This is a good story. The question is: Are we ready to take advantage of Africa's hopeful signs? Are we able to rise to the challenge to benefit our people and to further lift the prospects for our continent?
I believe the announcements of infrastructure roll-out by the President on Thursday suggest that we are indeed well placed for this new African story to impact in a meaningful way on our country.
I would like to highlight three major areas of work that need our focused attention in the coming period. These areas are key policy positions of the ANC and are evident in government priorities and extend from the domestic sphere into our international work, as one is inextricably linked to the other.
The first, directly linked to the government's domestic infrastructure plans, is cross-border infrastructure, including other instruments to improve intra-Africa trade. The second is developing our greatest asset, our young people, to meet the challenges. The third is strengthening sound governance practices in governments and in businesses across the continent and defeating corruption.
In terms of the first focus area, development of cross-border infrastructure, the plans announced by the President have included some of these - the North-South corridor from the heart of our industrial cities reaching north into the heart of Africa, improvements to the Durban-Gauteng rail corridor opening up links to the region and the manganese export channel through the port in Nelson Mandela Bay. These are examples where these programmes are already in process.
The White Paper on Foreign Policy for South Africa, published last year, emphasises the strengthening of regional economic communities as building blocks for African integration and recognises that future African economic prosperity will only be realised to the extent that the continent is able to rationalise and streamline these communities. This will include, of course, cross-border infrastructure programmes, thus creating seamless routes and connections for trade and interaction for goods and services to be bought and sold, and for people to move freely.
In January leaders of the continent met in Addis Ababa at the African Union, in terms of the theme or the title "Boosting Intra-African Trade". I would like to quote again from the article in The Economist. It says:
Trade barriers have been reduced at least a bit and despite the dearth of good roads, regional trade - long an African weakness - is picking up. By some measures intra-African trade has gone from 6% to 13% of the total volume. Some economists think the postapartheid reintegration of South Africa on its own has provided an extra 1% in annual GDP growth for the continent, and will continue to do so for some time. It is now the biggest source of foreign investment for other countries south of the Sahara.
So, although much of this work is under discussion on regional and continental levels, I believe there is still much work to be done.
The second area of focused attention is our young people. Africa has one of the youngest populations in the world. It is our greatest asset as a country and indeed as a continent. We must spend every effort to make sure our young people are educated and acquire the requisite skills to take advantage of what The Economist defines as a boom in sub-Saharan Africa.
Here again The Economist makes a comparison with Asia. It says:
There is another point of comparison with Asia: demography. Africa's population is set to double from 1 billion to 2 billion over the next 40 years. As Africa's population grows in size, it will also alter in shape. The median age is now 20 in Africa compared with 30 in Asia and 40 in Europe. With fertility rates dropping, that median will rise as today's mass of young people moves into its most productive years. The ratio of people of working age to those younger and older - the dependency ratio - will improve. This "demographic dividend" was crucial to the growth of East Asian economies a generation ago. It offers a huge opportunity to Africa today. We need to be ready, therefore, to take advantage of this demographic dividend.
The third area I mentioned that I believe needs this attention is entrenching good governance models on the continent. The efforts made thus far have resulted in more countries in Africa having held democratic elections in the past decade than ever before. For the past 17 years our foreign policy's number one priority has been our African agenda, with much work focused on developing solid continental institutions.
Looking at the achievements of our own policies and of other developments on the continent, there has been steady, even dramatic, progress. It is only 10 years since the launch of the African Union in Durban in 2002. This union at its heart aspires to bring unity to a huge and diverse continent and to spearhead the continent's development through its New Partnership for Africa's Development, Nepad, programme.
The AU's organs include, amongst other organs, the Pan-African Parliament, which is headquartered here in Gauteng; the African Court of Justice; and the African Peer Review Mechanism - that innovative and unique system of peer review among nations.
We can be justly proud that this body is now strengthened by the appointment of former Deputy President and current national chairperson of the ANC, Baleka Mbete, to the panel of eminent persons. These are very good developments and there are many others.
We must, of course, also recognise the difficulties the AU and its organs have confronted as they develop, but the start has been made and in the grand scheme of things considerable progress has been made in a relatively short space of time. The European Union, for example, is still battling with some of these problems 50 years down the line.
All this is encouraging and even exciting. So the question again is: Are we as a county ready to grow and build with the rest of the continent? In addition to writing a new South African story, are we ready to be part of writing a new African story? Do we fully recognise the desirability and indeed the necessity for us to link our growth to that of the continent?
Let me relate a little story that happened during the first stages of the economic crisis in 2008 when I was watching, like everybody else, those dramatic events unfolding. Banks were collapsing, markets were tumbling, the United States and other governments were pumping money into their respective economies to prevent total collapse. Huge amounts of money with many noughts were being discussed, and it's even difficult to conceive of some of the sizes of the budgets and cash that were being made available. And this all flashed across the television screens as trillions of dollars were pumped into economies to stave off disaster.
I watched as politicians abroad were interviewed, saying that this injection was needed and that, indeed, it was hoped it would prevent a total collapse. One commentator, on hearing this, said: "Yes, but hope is not a strategy." I agree with him.
Hopeful Africa, yes, but hope is not enough. We need focused and realistic strategies, diplomatic and other, to build our regional communities, to improve our intra-Africa trade, to entrench models of good governance and defeat corruption, and to upskill our young people to meet the challenges.
We need close working relationships with our African neighbours. We need diplomatic strategies to overcome our differences ...