Chairperson, comrades, colleagues, hon members of this House, indeed this is not simply a challenge in the title, but for all of us here and even internationally highly topical. About a year ago we heard about the collapse of Lehman Brothers and that signalled a global economic crisis that has reverberated around the world, encouraging many states to run and call for protectionist cover. Exports from developing countries were knocked down, leading to the closure of factories and retrenchment of workers. Retrenched workers joined their unemployed brothers and sisters. The most vulnerable members of our society have become victims of unbridled greed.
We may well ask ourselves: How can South Africa combat the challenges of the current global economic crises? However, we have already learnt this year, in this term of Parliament, that we have indeed been more fortunate than a number of countries in Africa and in the South and, in fact, in the West itself. There is absolutely no doubt that the financial fundamentals that we have developed over the past 15 years have stood us in good stead, for example, the National Credit Act and the Extended Public Works Programme, and more recently the infrastructural programme around Fifa. We have, even prior to the stimulus package, taken a decision to actually allocate more than R7 billion to infrastructural investment and construction and development.
What is interesting, however, when we talk about how we as a developmental state overcome these challenges, is that we will often think of the experiences of the Asian Tigers, that mythical miracle that collapsed about 20 years ago. We may ask ourselves whether that wasn't touted as a developmental state, and indeed that was, but that's about all it was. It certainly understood about state intervention but it relied upon government by decree. It was an authoritarian regime which pursued its development to become an industrialised state that would rival that of the major powers of the West but at the expense of workers and civil liberties.
Indeed we know that that is not what our people fought for. Of course people fought against apartheid, but we seem to forget that they also fought for human rights. We had a Reconstruction and Development Programme, RDP and a Freedom Charter before. That all came together in our own Constitution with the Bill of Rights.
Certainly, our idea of a developmental state is more along the lines of, as Gandhi put it, "the cornerstone of the developmental state is one where there is constant dialogue and listening to the voice of the people." Which is why we find in this fourth term of Parliament that in one sense we are returning to our roots, as we move around among our communities more earnestly and stop talking but rather start listening to what people are saying and include that in the way in which we are managing government, and in this Parliament the way in which we are exercising our oversight.
Indeed, a developmental state, as we understand it in an ANC government, is one that is people-driven and one that directs the pace and nature of the economy in pursuit of transformation. It also requires, as other members of the ANC team will put to the House, a radically different public service mindset. In the executive we also have a reconfigured Cabinet to capture this new approach. In the Presidency itself evidence of this is in the National Planning Commission and in the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation as well as Administration.
What you now have is a clear understanding that a developmental state is not just going to be about policy and it not just going to be about rights. It is about responsibilities, performance, planning for that and about actually monitoring and evaluating it and reviewing it if necessary and not trying to run postmortems five years later. It is also one in which you find that the ANC government's commitment to fighting poverty and arresting jobless growth is absolutely key in a developmental state and is not simply an economic question.
There is absolutely no doubt that, unlike that which was launched in the Asian Tigers and indeed in Japan itself, we actually understand that a developmental state will collapse unless it is directly linked to social and economic development.
In this way we cannot have jobless growth. We have also put a stop to deindustrialisation and we are funding companies in distress, reinvigorating the agricultural sector and rural development. Rural development is not simply digging in a field, it will have industrial development alongside it and it will venture forth through new systems of transport and with field workers who will actually work within a South African and African system and not try to impose something that will not work in our country. We recognise that, as President Zuma has said over and over again, the silo concept of implementation cannot work in a developmental state. To combat the current global crisis we will need an integrated co-ordinated approach to planning and policy implementation. It requires a collaborative effort from all stakeholders, not only the public and private sector working together, but both working together with the unions and civil society.
The core of all of this in the productive sector itself is our workers, and we will recognise that the biggest and most sustainable investment we can make is to invest in employment and not to simply see the cost of employment as paying out wages all the time, but as also contributing directly to increasing the productivity base of South Africa.
In conclusion, it is important to clarify that the kind of work that we are looking at is decent, quality work, retraining and upgrading the skills and recognising and developing the potential of the people in our developmental state. That is the basic of combating the economic global challenges facing us today. I thank you. [Applause.]