Chairperson and hon Minister, this document was a long time in coming, but I think it was well worth the wait. It certainly paints a very honest assessment of the challenges that we are going to have to face up to as a nation over the next 20 years.
The challenges it identifies are not a huge surprise though, and I think most South Africans would concur with its assessment. Even though it is not a huge surprise, it is nevertheless sobering, and it does force us as a nation to focus our attention on how we can concretely overcome some enormous constraints in our quest to become the country we all are aspiring to have.
Identifying the problems though is, with respect, Minister, the easy bit. The real difficulty will lie in developing a plan to overcome them, and having the political will to implement it. Rising to these nine challenges will require more than just policy changes. It will require a fundamental rethink of our approach to governance. As Einstein said:
Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
In essence we will need a revision of our society, one in which every South African can become part of generating and implementing the solutions, in a spirit of common purpose. My reading of the development literature has revealed that a common factor of countries which have been able to lift themselves out of poverty over the past 50 years has been that of high levels of social cohesion.
Given our divided history and the persistent levels of inequality, it is going to be difficult to build this social cohesion, but I hope that the public participation process you will now run will go some way in forging the social compact that we so desperately need if we are going to succeed in this task. I thank you. [Applause.]