State of the Nation: 100 ideas that can help South Africa

Yesterday the Democratic Alliance (DA) released a discussion document reviewing Jacob Zuma's 50 broken promises to the nation. We did so to illustrate that the President has, in the past, failed to match rhetoric and action, and to show how this has held our country back from achieving its potential.

President Zuma should use the opportunity of his State of the Nation address this week to affect real and meaningful change in South Africa. That change is achievable and involves the implementation of a series of actionable policy measures, the adoption of which would not only improve the quality of life for all South Africans, but would also address some of the most glaring problems that have hampered service delivery and good governance under successive ANC administrations.

Today, we are releasing 100 ideas that we believe can help to build a better South Africa.

The ideas that follow are contained in various policy documents, discussion documents and manifestos presented by the DA and DA Youth. They deal with a range of different portfolios and issues; many are easily implementable and would not require any significant budgeting to enact. They are offered in the interests of improving our country for all of our citizens.

 The 100 Ideas:

 Education, healthcare and other social issues:

 1. Raise the National Student Financial Aid Scheme income threshold to allow more students from working class families access to tertiary education.

2. Shut down the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and designate the funds to Further Education and Training (FET) colleges.

3. Address the shortage of doctors and nurses in our system by lifting the ban on the recruitment of health workers from other SADC countries.

4. Declare teaching an essential service.

5. Expand the school nutrition scheme to cover learners all the way through to matric.

6. Extend the child grant to teach all children in need of grants under the age of 16.

7. Re-open teacher training colleges as satellite campuses of universities. This would help go some way toward addressing the chronic shortage of teachers our country now faces.

8. Introduce a tax rebate equivalent to one-third of tuition fees which would be available to students or their parents for four years of successful study.

9. Introduce a mandatory National Retirement Savings Scheme.

10. Introduce new four year Bachelors degrees.

11. Abolish the means test for state old-age pensions.

12. Make an Income Support and Unemployment Grant of R110 per month available to all South Africans earning below R46 000 per annum or who are unemployed (cross-referenced against South African Social Security Agency records).

13. Establish Orphaned Child Support Committees across the country to provide orphaned children with the practical help that will allow them to adapt to their circumstances successfully.

14. Introduce a per-child pre-school state subsidy. This would be weighted according to parental income to ensure that there is some money available to all children. It could be supplemented by parents in any way they are able. It would be claimable in the year before a child is eligible for school and could be used to fund fees at any registered pre-primary education facility.

15. Create Orphaned Child Support Committees across the country to provide orphaned children with the practical help that will allow them to adapt to their circumstances successfully.

16. Introduce Master Teachers into the school system. These teachers will not be employed at a specific school, but will serve a number of schools within a district, teaching a single subject in which they have particular expertise.

17. Create a Regulatory Council for the Care of the Aged, to administer a national code of conduct and practice for employers and employees active within the aged care sector.

18. Change department of health regulations to ensure that the CEO at the head of each hospital would be responsible for delivery and directly accountable for the hospital's performance.

19. Set up national youth development programme using the Chrysalis Academy model.

20. Establish a Central Antiretroviral Treatment Centre, with a branch in each province, to manage the implementation of the antiretroviral programme, collate information and report on results.

21. Introduce a new three-tier college system.

22. Scrap the quota regulating the number of privately trained nurses.

23. Introduce Voluntary Community Service as an alternative to the Extended Public Works Programme.

The economy, state entities and services:

 24. Implement the youth wage subsidy programme that the DA, the DA Youth, the Harvard Panel on South Africa and Minister Gordhan have all repeatedly advocated.

25. Unbundle the natural monopoly of electricity transmission from the potentially competitive activity of generation, by finalising the regulatory framework that would allow Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to operate on the generation side.

26. Introduce Opportunity Vouchers to allow for partial subsidy of university or FET college fees.

27. Zero-rate VAT on textbooks to improve literacy and access to educational materials. This could be paid for by shutting down the National Youth Development Agency.

28. Hold unions liable, as juristic bodies, for breaches of the law during strike actions.

29. Place a moratorium on any exploration or mining activity that involves ‘fracking', the process of hydraulic fracturing that uses immense amounts of water and has the potential to contaminate large bodies of water with pollutants.

30. Boost job creation and renewable energy production by lifting the moratorium on surplus maize being used for biofuel production.

31. Allow the National Assembly to make appointments to the board of the Land Bank by amending the Land and Agricultural Development Act.

32. Allow employers to claim back money spent on training employees from the skills development levy.

33. Establish a Permanent Fraud Unit within the Department of Human Settlements to replace the present ineffective system of ad hoc task teams.

34. Introduce a scaled licence fee regime to fund the SABC.

35. Establish a dedicated Road Maintenance Fund to address the R120bn road maintenance backlog.

36. Introduce a feed-in-tariff allowing a fixed price to be paid for decentralised renewable technologies such as wind, photovoltaic, concentrated solar thermal, small scale hydro, biomass and tidal.

37. Permit no land restitution to take place without a prior, negotiated agreement on post-settlement development.

38. Create a South African Sports Academy, as a single national centre of excellence, based on the Australian Institute for Sport model.

39. Separate beneficiary selection from land acquisition, so that land can be acquired without having to first identify a beneficiary.

40. Build the country's first generation of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power (CSTP) plants.

41. Amend the wage model to take account of differing market and regional conditions.

42. Give the Office of the Consumer Protector chapter 9 institution status.

43. Create a National Human Resource Development Commission to provide specialised research into the country's long-term skills development needs and to advise the Department of Labour.

44. Complete an audit of all state-owned land, and then set up a databank so that all prospective recipients of redistributed land can be informed of what is available.

45. Allow the Industrial Development Corporation to act as a venture capital fund to support innovation.

46. Create an Agency for Sustainable Development, to ensure that industrial and growth initiatives spearheaded by government departments take into account the country's resource constraints and the carrying capacity of the environment.

47. Set up Export Processing and Job Zones that require participant industries to be labour intensive.

48. Make it mandatory for all appliances to be labelled with energy consumption information.

49. Abolish tax on land transfers (including stamp duties and transfer duties) for first time buyers and sellers.

50. Sell off the loss-making South African Airways.

51. Widen commuters' options with a state subsidy for a single, multi-use ticket applicable to all certified public transport users, including taxi-commuters.

52. Offer rebates on loans to farmers taking part in mentorship schemes for new land redistribution beneficiaries and require initial expert support in becoming viable agricultural producers.

53. Introduce a "Rand-for-Rand" housing subsidy programme, whereby the State will match the amount accumulated by a low-income home-buyer for a deposit with an equal contribution, up to a maximum of R2i000.

54. Offer a tax break on all interest earned on deposits held for longer than twelve months, to help to increase savings and investment and lower our dependency on foreign capital inflows.

55. Allow the labour broking industry to set up a self-regulatory Board of Labour Brokers that would enforce a strict code of conduct.

56. Open up South Africa's exchange controls to allow the currency market to adjust for the overvalued Rand - boosting the export sector and job creation.

57. Update the Register for Tender Defaulters.

58. Place a moratorium on loss-making parastatals sponsoring sporting events.

59. Conduct a national audit of the state of South Africa's road infrastructure.

60. Diversify the ownership of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) by selling off Shosholoza Meyl and Metrorail. PRASA could retain ownership of the physical components of the rail network, such as the tracks, land, bridges, tunnels, signalling and communications, and be responsible for covering maintenance and safety, and funding capital investments through borrowings.

Governance:

 61. Create a Presidential Portfolio Committee that will oversee the Presidency and the work of the two Planning Ministries.

62. Ban political parties from tendering with government, to avoid a repeat of the Chancellor House debacle.

63. Amend the Ministerial Handbook to downwardly revise the permissible purchase price of new ministerial vehicles, and upwardly revise the mileage at which a vehicle may be replaced.

64. Introduce a mixed PR-constituency electoral system at the national sphere of government to improve oversight and accountability.

65. Implement the amendments to the Executive Members Ethics Act and Ethics Code proposed by the Public Protector in her report on the failure of the President to declare his financial interests.

66. Introduce prescribed sanctions for breaching of the Executive Members Ethics Act.

67. Introduce a clause concerning ‘cooling off periods' for ministers in their ministerial performance agreements. This would prevent former ministers from using the influence and privileged information they obtain in office for their own private gain.

68. Ban members of the cabinet from accepting government credit cards.

69. Amend the Ministerial Handbook to force cabinet ministers to decline gifts worth more than R1000.

70. Introduce an electoral system that elects the President directly, rather than by a vote of legislators.

71. Legislate to prevent any individual convicted on any charge of corruption, theft or fraud ever being entitled to hold public office.

72. Create an Independent Oversight Committee, to evaluate private sector tenders, and to institute penalties against successful tenders who fail to deliver on the stipulations of their contract.

73. Create a single, functional e-Government website that would allow citizens to do things like renew driver's licences online.

74. Institute three- to five-year performance contracts for senior public servants.

Foreign affairs:

75. Ratify the 2007 AU Charter on Elections, Democracy and Governance, which would advance human rights and democratisation on the African continent.

76. Release the Generals' Report commissioned by former President Mbeki into the 2002 presidential elections in Zimbabwe.

77. Convene a special meeting of the South African Development Community's (SADC) heads of state and parliamentary forum to address human rights abuses and the suppression of democracy in Swaziland.

78. Name South Africa's ambassador to the newly independent South Sudanese state.

79. Withdraw Jon Qwelane as South Africa's ambassador to Uganda.

80. Extend the term of the Donen Commission to ensure that the role of South African individuals and companies in the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal is afforded the full and exhaustive investigation it has up until now been denied.

Criminal justice system and defence:

 81. Mandate the Police Ministry to implement Independent Complaints Directorate recommendations.

82. Deunionise the South African Defence Force.

83. Create a statutory body, similar to the Judicial Services Commission, to appoint the National Director of Public Prosecutions.

84. Reintroduce the Police Narcotics Bureau.

85. Reconstitute the Directorate for Special Operations.

86. Address South Africa's recidivism rate by introducing Halfway Houses across the country.

87. Create a Directorate for Victims of Crime, and a Victim Link Service to support victims of sexual violence.

88. Remove the Forensic Science Laboratories from the Department of Police and the Forensic Chemistry Laboratories from the Department of Health, and create a new Forensic Laboratory Service along the lines proposed by the DA in April last year.

89. Replace the present system of once-yearly crime statistics releases, with a publicly accessible, real-time crime information system.

90. Reinstate the Anti-Corruption Unit of the South African Police Service, which was closed down in 2002.

91. Establish an elite training academy in the South African Police Service.

92. Introduce a rebate on the private security expenses paid by individuals and businesses.

93. Force certain criminal offenders serving non-custodial sentences to wear electronic monitoring and tracking devices at all times.

94. Withdraw Menzi Simelane as National Director of Public Prosecutions.

95. Reallocate funds from the SAPS VIP Protection Unit budget to the under-resourced Central Drug Authority.

96. Reopen the investigation into the 1999 Arms Deal.

97. Commit to conducting a defence review every five years.

98. Introduce a system of mandatory specialised training for specific categories of police officer.

99. Establish a National Register of Police Resources.

100. Fast-track the return of Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Units.

Statement issued by Athol Trollip, MP, Democratic Alliance Parliamentary Leader, February 8 2011

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