We need a new economic consensus, founded on education

Note to editors: The following speech was delivered by DA National Leader Helen Zille at the University of Cape Town today.

I have recently been reading about the American civil rights activist and politician, Barbara Jones, the first black women ever elected to Congress from the conservative Southern states. She was a visionary who stood up to racism and prejudice wherever she encountered it in her home state of Texas. She once famously wrote that she felt as if the authors of the American Constitution had simply forgotten about her, that when they penned the words "We, the people...", they were talking about only some people, and not all the people.

It was a prescient comment, because it revealed how millions of black Americans felt about how their country, their constitution, and their liberation had failed them. Now if you read the American constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, you will be hard pressed to find a single discriminatory word in it. It is visionary, progressive and inclusive, and yet in the 1960s - 200 years after its adoption - African Americans were still subjugated as second-class citizens with lesser rights and fewer opportunities.

South Africa's Constitution is a much younger document, but it is also visionary, progressive, and inclusive and does not contain a single discriminatory word. It enshrines first and second generation rights, and lays the foundation for a prosperous and democratic society.

But 18 years after democracy most South Africans still feel that they were simply forgotten when the Constitution was authored. I need not repeat all of the statistics here, but every socially aware South African can see that apartheid's injustices in education, social mobility, access to the economy and geography still persist. People may feel that the Constitution "simply forgot" them.

The temptation is to think that it is the Constitution that has failed South Africa. Categorically, it is not. I have said before, and I say it again, South Africa does not need a new Constitution - it needs a new government. 

Over the last six weeks, the DA has campaigned across South Africa. We have worked hard to put the stories of the millions of South Africans who are unemployed onto the national agenda, and to talk about our plans to grow the economy and create jobs. 

And we're just getting started. Ultimately, we aim to govern South Africa so that we can change South Africa's economy so that it works for the many, not the few. 

At the moment, our divided economy leaves millions of people feeling like democracy has left them behind - they are increasingly angry, and it is beginning to test the limits of our social harmony - with some violent and tragic results. 

We need a new economic consensus, with a changed economy that includes everyone in our success, that brings everyone along, that gives every single person a stake, and that makes us all feel part of the project. 

I do not have all of the answers as to what that new economic consensus should look like.

But I do know one thing - so long as our deep, deep inequalities in education still exist, we will never redress the economic injustices of apartheid. Simple as that. 

Barbara Jones spent her life fighting for equal rights for African Americans, but she understood this simple truth when she wrote of Abraham Lincoln's emancipation proclamation: "until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the colour of a person's skin, emancipation will be a proclamation not a fact". 

Unfortunately, instead of understanding the problem, and then prescribing an implementable and sustainable solution, the government flew into controversial and complex curriculum innovations (that had failed in other more advanced countries), while at the same time stripping the education system of the most experienced teachers through the voluntary severance package. Having destabilised the system so profoundly, we should not be surprised that pouring money into it did nothing to improve outcomes.

Money is, of course, important in public education. There are still far too many schools that are overcrowded, with inadequate equipment and facilities. But the ongoing textbook crisis in Limpopo, where there was more than enough money for the textbooks needed, shows us just how important good management and corruption-free administration is in the equation. 

The DA already has hard evidence of what works. More time in the classroom, working through the core curriculum, with a good text book in each subject, a focus on literacy and numeracy, and good teachers who are well prepared and on time. 

All of these things are steadily leading to very significant improvements in education results in the Western Cape, where children from poor communities now have better chances at building a better life than they would anywhere else in the country. That is a fact. 

Pass rates in our worst performing schools here in the Western Cape are up a full 18% since we came to office in 2009. That is real redress. 

To go further, we will need to deal with the monopoly power that the ironically named South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) exercises over the system. We know that competition is good in every other sector in society and in our economy. Indeed, it is even protected in law - except in the area of organised labour, where monopolistic unions that have the ultimate insider club status, act to block competitors and avoid all accountability. 

South African labour law follows the doctrine of the "dominant union", which basically says that whichever union represents more than 50% of members becomes the only recognised union, and represents all the other members of other unions, and non-members as well. It is like saying that if the ANC won 51% of the vote, all other parties would cease to exist and the ANC would become the only party in Parliament, filling every seat. In that context, every one of us would recognise it as an unacceptable one-party state, but we accept the same situation in our labour law. It is absurd. 

I recently heard Bobby Godsell (who, as the former CEO of Anglo American, understands how unions work better than most), say that the "dominant union" doctrine may well have been one of the key contributing factors to the Marikana tragedy, as smaller unions that had legitimate demands were kept away from the bargaining table by the "dominant" NUM. 

Ending inequality in our education system cannot end in our schools. Nine out of ten of the fastest growing professions in the world today require specific skills or qualifications. 

Also, job opportunities for people with higher education will grow at double the rate of job opportunities for people with high school certificates over the next decade. 

If we want to give everyone a fair shot at accessing opportunities they've never had before, we have got to give them the chance to get some form of higher education. 

Here too our national policy has been obsessed with enforcing the lowest common denominator, instead of supporting innovators, rewarding excellence, and working to expand access for those who deserve to go to university but cannot afford it. 

The ever growing bubble in the unsecured credit market is due in no small part to students being forced to go further and further into debt to fund their own education.

Education in South Africa has to offer truly equal opportunities to every young person - for the township child who studies by candlelight and who dreams of becoming a doctor, or the middle-class kid from the suburbs who can't afford university fees and wants to be a teacher in a public school. Our country should give them both the chance to achieve their dreams. 

That is why the next phase of the DA's Jobs Campaign is going to be about education. Education for Jobs. Because we have identified this simple truth - if we want to change South Africa's economy to grow faster and create more jobs, we must fix education. 

If we can succeed in doing that, we can forge a new social compact in which no one feels left behind or forgotten; in which the wrongs of apartheid are thoroughly and substantively redressed; and in which opportunity is unconcerned with the colour of a person's skin.

Thank you.

Issued by the DA, September 17 2012

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