President Jacob Zuma made a very important speech to South African diplomats on 31 August 2014. Addressing the annual Heads of Mission Conference he told our ambassadors that the economy is the apex priority for the next five years.
"We must put all our efforts into promoting a positive environment for economic growth and development if we are to break the back of poverty, unemployment and inequality."
He told them that South African envoys must prepare themselves for vigorous marketing and trade promotion to enable our country to make use of all the opportunities that are created by our economic cluster and by the business community.
"We want more markets for South African goods abroad and we want more investments to flow towards South Africa. We want you to play your role in this regard," he said.
If government and our diplomats take those words to heart, we could see a South Africa that is open for business, that realises opportunities once missed are often lost forever, and understands that if we are to create jobs for our unemployed millions, we need a new mindset. The start of 2015 is the ideal time to remind ourselves about what the president said and to decide to put his words into practice.
Too many in government are hostile to or at least vaguely uncomfortable with and about business. Many are stuck in the outdated ideology of fifty years ago. Some have not caught up with the exciting present where prosperity lies in going out and finding investments and new markets that we might be able to satisfy; in coming home and producing goods that can compete for price and quality with the best in the world and then selling our goods. Government cannot provide all the jobs and should not: trade and investment can do it for us as it has done for so many other countries.