Note to editors: The following statement was distributed earlier today at a press conference hosted by DA Leader Helen Zille, DA Federal Chairperson Dr Wilmot James MP, and DA Chairperson of the Federal Executive, James Selfe MP.
Introduction
Today the Democratic Alliance launches a new policy project designed to identify what South Africa needs to do in order to achieve 8% economic growth. Only by accelerating growth to this level will we begin to tackle our unemployment crisis, encourage inward investment and lift millions of South Africans out of poverty.
Over the course of the next year, the DA will hold a number of meetings, with stakeholders both inside and outside the party, culminating mid-2012 with a national conference and the formal adoption of the policy document.
Recent international experience shows that economic growth is the only true pathway out of poverty. Overcoming the obstacles to economic growth, and ensuring that this growth benefits all South Africans, are our primary challenges. And so the DA has put the challenge of achieving an 8% growth rate at the front and centre of our policy agenda. Leading up to 2014, this will be the party's core and principal concern.
Context
There is a fundamental debate unfolding in South Africa about the nature of our economy and its future direction. The ANC government's view is that the answer to economic growth lies in greater state intervention, most recently defined by the idea of a ‘Developmental State'. Ostensibly this approach aims to grow our economy but, in reality, it cannot reconcile its advocacy of control with those interventions necessary to stimulate growth.
It is inherently contradictory and, thus, has failed. Indeed, over the past decade, our economy has been unable to realise its potential, held back by an ineffective bureaucracy and the controlling arm of a centralised state. As a result, investment rates have stagnated and our unemployment rate remains amongst the highest in the world.
The failure of this approach has seen the radicalisation of this debate. As the pressure to create jobs and generate prosperity has increased, so more extreme views have come to the fore, and their proponents have been given increasing space to argue their case. If the Developmental State represents economic stagnation, these more extreme views constitute a clear and present danger to our country's future. They are the threat, not a solution.
The DA's vision
But there is another way - an approach that puts growth at the heart of our economic agenda, and structures every element of our economy around that objective. This approach recognises that the state cannot create sustainable jobs for the 6,7 million unemployed. Instead, it maintains that the state has a responsibility to help South Africans acquire the skills they need, create the conditions that help businesses to expand and hire more staff, and incentivise the creation of new businesses.
It treats the 8% economic growth target as the test by which to measure the appropriateness of policy because those policies that will accelerate growth in our economy are those that will skill people and drive the growth of job-creating economic activity.
Many of the constraints to growth are well known and documented. More work is required to identify those that cut to the heart of inequality in South Africa and, indeed, our failure to achieve job-rich growth. If we are to put South Africa first, and rise above the various political, macro and micro-constraints that hold us back, we need to work out how to overcome these challenges. Over the next year, the DA will make this its central policy objective.
The process
Over the latter part of this year the DA will develop a diagnostic designed to identify those primary constraints to economic growth, and propose a series of policy solutions to address them. Once that diagnostic is developed, we will aim to have a full draft policy document produced by the end of the year, in order that it might be work-shopped through the party during the first half of 2012. In the course of producing that document, we shall make every effort to draw on the wide range of expertise our country boasts, in civil society, academia, the media and in those governments the DA controls.
By mid-2012 we aim to be able to present to South Africa our solution: the DA's plan to achieve 8% growth. This vision will become one of the cornerstones on which the party's policy agenda leading up to 2014 is based.
This plan will be presented to a policy conference of the DA to be held in the course of August 2012.
Statement issued by the Democratic Alliance, August 18 2011
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
