COSATU statement on the SONA 2017
COSATU has noted the State of the Nation Address as presented by the President of the Republic of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, yesterday 09 February 2017. While the speech tried to deal with some of the issues that the federation raised in its pre-SONA expectations statement, we are concerned at the lack of detail on how and when some of these proposed and obviously necessary reforms will be completed.
The speech did fall seriously short on many issues and also failed to grapple with the enormity of the task of putting our economy on to a new growth path. We did not hear any concrete plans to dismantle the economic legacy we inherited from apartheid, nothing was concretely offered on how to rebuild the manufacturing industry, to eliminate the apartheid wage structure, to change the macro-economic policies, including using state-owned companies to restructure the economy. There was no mention of banning labour brokers or any measures to strengthen collective bargaining. It was also frustrating to notice the silence on how government will address the varying governance crises, outsourcing and labour broking and retrenchments in Telkom, SAA, the Post Office, Eskom and other SOEs.
COSATU is disappointed at government's lack of a clear and concrete programme to ensure decent permanent jobs for all South Africans. Such a plan needs to bridge the gap that currently exists between business and labour ;and also needs to be premised upon a living wage for all and not cheap and precarious labour. We expected the SONA to also include specific targets per sector per month. This country needs to create at least 100 000 new jobs per month and big business should stop retrenching across the board ,including the lifting of the vacancy freeze by government departments.
We welcome though the efforts to make it easier and more attractive for people to invest in South Africa although further details are needed in this regard. The president also failed to mention the much more serious investment strike by those employers , who are sitting on more than R1 trillion in social surpluses, which they are refusing to invest in the economy. Surely this is the time to introduce a developmental state, determined to restructure the economy without solely relying on pleading with private sector to invest that money and create jobs.
We are happy with the commitment to drive economic growth with R900 billion in infrastructure and R500 billion in state expenditure and local procurement requirements. The federation will like to hear more details on how to support key strategic sectors, e.g. manufacturing, agriculture, textiles, renewable energy and tourism. We eagerly await detailed report back by ministers on the 9 point plan, although, we would have preferred that these reports be included in the SONA.