Three Strikes and You're Out: Gauteng's missed job opportunities

(Note: Gavin's Speech delivered in response to the Premier's 2012 State of the Province Address)

Madam Speaker
Madam Premier
Honourable Members

We are past the mid-term of this administration. In less than two years we will be facing the voters again. What will we tell them, as their representatives in this House?

It is the first and foremost duty of every honourable Member in this legislature to hold the executive to account and to scrutinise any legislation that comes before us. That is the entire point of having provincial legislatures. It applies to all of us. Everything else we do is secondary.

So if we scrutinise how far we have come since 2009, and how far we still have to go, what conclusions can we reach? Regrettably, although there have been some achievements, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we could have done so much better.

I say this especially from the position of oversight over the Department of Economic Development and the all-important issues of economic growth and job creation. Here, with only a few exceptions, the Provincial Government has failed the people of Gauteng in their hour of need.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. In her State of the Province Address for 2012, the Honourable premier claimed that, and I quote:
"By the end of December 2011, the provincial government had exceeded its job creation targets, with 281 686 jobs created".

Wonderful, you might think; at least this goes some way to alleviating the job losses in South Africa's economic heartland. But closer scrutiny reveals something else.

The Premier went on to explain that of these 281,686 jobs, only 5,629 were new permanent jobs. Yes, 5,629. Almost all the rest were temporary, low-paid Expanded Public Works jobs of a few weeks duration. While the EPWP does important charity work, and the DA supports it, an EPWP job is not a job as we understand it. It's not permanent; it pays a daily wage that would make a COSATU member weep; and it’s a far cry from the very recent calls for "decent work" from this same government.

The fact is that more than 276,000 of the jobs created were not sustainable. Let us face this honestly and upfront, and tell the people the truth.

Now we are told that the Gauteng government will create one million new jobs by the end of the year, created by 100,000 youth entrepreneurs at a rate of 10 new jobs per entrepreneur. This kind of simplistic arithmetic is very worrying. For one thing, you don't create an entrepreneur by training one. That is one reason why the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller, the GEP, falls short. (There are other reasons as well, but I have raised these in other debates.)

And even assuming we do manage to find 100,000 new youth entrepreneurs, this does not translate into 100,000 new 10-man businesses. The failure rate for business start ups generally in the first year of operation is 50%. Yes, fifty per cent. After that, as statistics show us, the fall out continues. And this sort of basic information is not a secret – lots of research has been done. Nor does one entrepreneur equal ten jobs, unless you attended one of our poorer government schools. So one wonders who has been advising the MEC on these matters, and what planet of ignorance they are from.

Even for those entrepreneurs who do manage to survive in Gauteng, there's more bad news. The latest figures from the Finance Department show that despite promises year after year after year to fix the problem, the GPG still only manages to pay 75% of suppliers within 30 days. This destroys cash flow, and with it the very BEE companies whose sustainability and growth depends on doing business with government.
I have another dispiriting observation.

Our present MEC for Economic Development has promised to create an environment more conducive to doing business and thus to creating jobs. This means removing unnecessary and obstructive red tape, and reducing the costs of doing business in South Africa.

Yet this year the Gauteng government has been complicit (to put it mildly) in one of the biggest of all new impositions on business, the tolling of an urban road. And the DED was not even consulted on the matter until after the fact.

Here’s another promise that is unlikely to be delivered on: The Premier has promised access for 95% of Gauteng to broadband by 2014. But it does not bode well that we have been waiting since 2009 for Gauteng Online – which is still not working, as we all know, despite questionable expenditure that runs into billions of rands.

My last observation for today regarding this government’s self-inflicted obstacles to job creation is that of the moratorium on liquor licenses, imposed since August last year, with incalculable cost in terms of jobs not created in Gauteng (the Spur chain of restaurants alone estimated jobs forgone at 600).

However, given that the liquor regulation system in Gauteng was in a shambles, rife with corruption and an estimated 10,000 fraudulent liquor licenses issued, we were prepared to accept the moratorium for the sake of clean governance. After all, we do commend our Premier for the strides she has made in addressing corruption in the province.

In this case, a new Liquor Board would be appointed, along with a new Chairman. All well and good – that is, until we find out that the new Chairman appointed by our MEC for Economic Development is Mr Bally Chuene. And who is Mr Chuene? Well, if I am correct, he is the same person who is currently in court on charges of fraud amounting to R400,000. And when that's decided, there is another fraud charge pending to the amount of R200 million. So what was the point of the moratorium? I rest my case.

Ladies and gentlemen, at least part of our failure to deliver jobs in Gauteng is this government's ideological resistance to more private sector participation. Why is there such a resistance to using private sector resources and skills, including proper project management skills? Why are we not harnessing the power of Public Private Partnerships, or PPPs ? Instead, PPS are becoming like rhinos in Gauteng – increasingly scarce. And the resulting loss is all ours.

I believe me, ladies and gentlemen, when I say that I take no pleasure in all of this. We are all in the same boat, government and opposition. If the boat leaks where you are sitting, I am just as concerned as you are, because it will affect all of us. We all want Gauteng to win. But wanting is not enough. Doing is everything, and we are not doing enough, and where we are doing things we are too often getting it tragically wrong.

"Tell no lies, claim no easy victories" said Amilcar Cabral. Yet this government continues to claim easy victories. But what message are we sending our people? Who do we think we are fooling?

The real tragedy is that despite good intentions, between these intentions and their implementation this government is failing.
Yet it could all be so different, with the right approach and effective, competent, transparent government. We have inflicted these wounds on ourselves, and that is the real tragedy here.

It could all have been so much different.

Thank you Madam Speaker.