All right. Mr Speaker, I hope the hon Mazibuko listened to what I just said, sir. [Laughter.]
Just this week, Minister Radebe announced the far-reaching decision by the Justice and Crime Prevention and Security Cluster to release publicly a list of names of people who've been convicted of fraud and corruption, demonstrating the zero-tolerance approach to corruption that the NDP proposes.
The Minister of Sport and Recreation recently handed over an outdoor gym to the community of Rocklands in Mitchells Plain, taking forward one of the proposals in the NDP to promote physical activity and healthy living. The collaboration between the Ministries of Sports and Recreation and of Basic Education has reintroduced school sports and physical education into schools across the country.
Towards the end of last year, the Ministry of Health also launched a pilot project on integrated school health as a critical element in our revitalised primary health care system. All of these are recommendations contained in the NDP.
The City of Johannesburg recently announced a major infrastructure investment programme. This will include the introduction of transport corridors to connect the different parts of the city through affordable and accessible mass public transport in line with the NDP and the city's own growth and development strategy. These are only some of the many initiatives where government has begun implementing various aspects of the plan.
But it is important that I restate the point made previously, that this is not a plan for government only. The NDP invited South Africans from across sectors to work together in partnership to implement the plan and we have been humbled by the enthusiasm shown by so many South Africans. For example, stakeholders in the early childhood development sector are currently engaged in discussions to find effective models of collaboration to take forward the proposals of the NDP. This collaboration involves different government departments, NGOs and the private sector. Earlier this month, the MEC for Education in KwaZulu-Natal, the hon Senzo Mchunu, in his budget speech announced that the province would establish a partnership with different sectors, in particular the private sector, on an initiative to improve learning outcomes as proposed in the NDP.
Minister Motshekga also announced a national equivalent of this initiative called the Education Collaboration Framework in her Budget Vote speech last month. Hon members, in February this year, the President convened a meeting between government and business to discuss how to implement the NDP together.
It was agreed that the two sectors should meet on a regular basis and a follow-up meeting is expected to take place soon. In addition, Business Leadership South Africa, BLSA, has put together task teams that are focusing on identifying how the business sector can contribute to the implementation of the NDP.
Two weeks ago, the commission was invited to a meeting of young people representing a number of organisations. These young people expressed enthusiastic support for the NDP. They see it as something that the youth should be actively involved in shaping and implementing. They took it upon themselves to assist in making the long NDP document more accessible to young people. They also resolved to create a "dashboard" to monitor implementation of youth-related proposals in the plan and to hold government and business accountable and to meet annually to track the progress of implementation.
In this June, Youth Month, it's important to celebrate the spirit that these young people are putting before us. My benchmate, Minister Radebe, and I are of the generation of 1976, so I think that it is appropriate that we start handing over to young people who demonstrate this spirit about the NDP. [Applause.]
Mr President, it's important to reassure the nation that the NDP is indeed our roadmap and that people are striving to make it work. Rather than patting ourselves on the back, we should instead be asking whether the initiatives being implemented will actually deliver change to those who need it the most. It is often easy for us to forget the realities of poverty when arguing the principles of exact positions. Many of those who are able to provide detailed analyses and criticisms of proposals do it from positions of relative comfort.
While it is crucial that we implement strategies and policies that are thoroughly considered and discussed, and that we debate the merits of proposals, quite often alternative proposals are absent.
Turning to the criticism of NDP proposals on the economy, and through you, hon Speaker, let me just say to the hon Mazibuko - no, I want to say to you, Mr President, I admire your power. [Laughter.] You made a speech two weeks ago. It impacted on the rand, the Brazilian real and on the currency of every developing market. That was one speech you made. [Applause.] Now, if hon Mazibuko believes that, I want to invite her to Prof Ben Turok's economics class. [Laughter.] Clearly, she does not understand what economics is about, therefore the indicators that she is using to make a point have no substance or effect, Mr Speaker; I'm not addressing her. [Interjections.]
So, turning to the criticism of NDP proposals on the economy, it is worth highlighting that there is not much disagreement on the goals and targets. Much of the disagreement centres on the proposed strategies to create jobs, grow the economy and ensure economic inclusion. Even if we accept that the criticisms of the proposed strategies are valid, this begs the question whether we should wait for complete consensus before starting to tackle the many challenges we face.
Are we able to face the unemployed young people and the thousands living in poverty and say: We aren't treading on your dreams? Will we be able to hold onto our integrity when they remain locked outside of the labour market by the actions we take or fail to take? Will they believe us when our actions sometimes close rather than open opportunities? Will our policy positions hold true when our actions as leaders in the public sector, business and labour exacerbate the living conditions of the poor instead of improving them? How can we look them in the eye when the gap between incomes of the rich and the poor remain so high? Should we not be asking ourselves why we aren't doing more?
The NDP follows a comprehensive approach. By emphasising the building of human, physical and institutional capabilities, the NDP offers us an opportunity to make the transition from an undesirable situation we inherited to an economy we can all be proud of. It contains proposals on how to transform the space economy, the relationship between where people live and work, and a careful selection of where different kinds of economic activity should take place.
It also includes proposals on how to improve the quality of education and develop the skills of our people, how to create sustainable human settlements and the social safety net that should be provided. It addresses weaknesses in the Public Service and focuses quite clearly on corruption.
proposals are carefully selected to enable us to move from where we are to an improved state. But that requires that we have a firm understanding of our current circumstances. In this I regard again want to quote Tony Judt, when he writes:
History is not foreordained, we mere mortals must invent it as we go along - and in circumstances, as old Marx rightly pointed out, not entirely of our own making. We shall have to ask the perennial questions again, but be open to different answers. We need to sort out to our own satisfaction what aspects of the past we wish to keep and what made them possible. Which circumstances were unique? And which circumstances could we, with sufficient will and effort, reproduce?
The NDP does not offer easy, pat solutions to the challenges we face. It could never be easy to change the path of our history. Reaching this point in our democracy has not been easy either, nor has it been by accident or without thought. In the past 20 years, the ruling ANC has adopted and implemented many policies that are sound. Just so that we are clear, policies that were in most cases adopted by consensus by all political parties represented in Parliament and led by the ruling party, policies designed to ensure that we change the reality that we inherited. When the policies do not have the desired outcome, we should have the maturity to reflect and the flexibility of mind to change our approach or discuss changing the policy, if required.
This is precisely what the NPC has done. We can only grow from learning, but there cannot be any learning if we do not implement. Similarly, if our present strategies contained in the plan do not work, we need to address them, but we cannot wait for the perfect plan as such a thing does not exist. Learning as we implement allows us an opportunity to get better at implementation rather than merely becoming better at planning.
The implementation of the plan is now the responsibility of government and the nation. The NPC will play an advisory role in order to contribute its expertise and independent perspective to the implementation of the plan. This will include advising government and other sectors on implementation, commissioning research to deal with gaps, facilitating collaboration between different actors and mobilising support for the plan.
The NPC has started working with the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and the National Treasury to develop the Medium-Term Strategic Framework. Careful attention will be paid to how the different proposals will be sequenced, in particular identifying those that need to be prioritised in the first five years.
We understand that the only way to ensure that South Africans know the plan is to make it easily accessible. As the President said earlier, we've translated the executive summary into all 11 languages, and these translations are now available on our website. More copies of the NDP will be printed and distributed to all public and university libraries, FET colleges and Thusong Centres. Work will start immediately with producing a pocket-sized version of the NDP to ensure greater accessibility.
Good planning requires credible evidence. The NPC manages two main research programmes. The first one is the National Income Dynamics Study, a panel study aimed at providing data that allow us to answer questions such as who is moving ahead in terms of income and who is staying behind and why. The second is the programme to support pro-poor policy development. This programme offers grants to researchers to undertake studies in government priority areas with the aim of extending the evidence available to policy- makers.
For the 2013-14 financial year, the NPC is allocated a budget of R77,7 million. Of this, R49,713 million is allocated to the Ministry subprogramme; R20,127 million to the Research and Policy Advisory subprogramme and R7,8 million to the Communication and Public Participation subprogramme.
In conclusion, I want to reiterate, as a nation we must define what we want to become. This is what the National Development Plan does. To be able to do that, we must know where we are. Knowing what we are includes the recognition that as a nation we are not all that we would like to be. This is the responsibility of history; the recognition of what we are, what we want to be and the journey in between.
In dealing with this, it's very important that we, as colleagues, as hon members of this House, understand, always, the burden of responsibility that rests with us. It is the burden, so beautifully articulated in those words of Yeats, when he says of the poor, who have only dreams, "Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams". Thank you. [Applause.]