GOOD Speech by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
14 February 2023
Note To Editor: This is the speech that was delivered by GOOD Secretary-General and Member of Parliament, Brett Herron, during the debate on the President’s state of the nation (Sona) address.
Madam Speaker
BASIC INCOME:
South Africa requires miracles to eliminate unemployment.
If the economy was to achieve steady growth of 3% per annum for the next 14 years (which is nearly double Treasury’s prediction for 2023-2025), the unemployment rate would be reduced to 25%, but eight million South Africans would still be without jobs.
No number of well-intended job creation schemes, entrepreneurial training programmes and red tape reduction projects will alter these numbers.
In the absence of miracles, the President’s words – “extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures” – apply.
Mr President: We cannot maintain such a high number of unemployed people in the absence of decisive mitigation measures to ensure people do not starve.
We have no choice but to adopt an expanded cash transfer system, as part of a comprehensive social security system overhaul, as a means of supporting and ensuring social and economic justice, constitutional rights and stability.
The announcement that the R350 per month Covid Grant will be continued is rather less than we hoped for from this year’s SONA.
Given the magnitude of the crisis of unemployment, and the destitution and hunger of millions of people, this year’s speech was the perfect opportunity to unequivocally commit the State to implementing a Basic Income Grant.
A comprehensive social security system can and must be implemented with the necessary political will.
- Inefficient government perks and programmes must be closed
- The number of government departments must be reduced
- At a provincial level there is an urgent need to reconsider spending that occurs through provincial premiers offices and provincial legislatures
- Regressive or ineffective tax expenditure must be shut down or fixed
If we did these things, we could prioritise the needs of the neediest citizens by implementing a B.I.G.
Let’s get it done.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
Mr President, the greatest barrier to entrepreneurship is not training or red tape; it is access to finance.
If the World Bank is correct, we can halve our unemployment rate if we achieve the same level of entrepreneurship as our peer countries.
We therefore support your view that “growth and the creation of jobs in our economy will be driven by small and medium size enterprises, cooperatives and informal businesses”.
But we must invest far more substantially in ensuring access to finance.
The plan to provide R1.4 billion in financing to over 90 000 entrepreneurs, and the commitment to establish a R10 billion fund for SMME growth are good.
But the fact that this finance is to be administered by the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (SEFA) rings alarm bells.
It was SEFA that implemented the President’s Spaza Shop support scheme during the Covid pandemic. SEFA implemented a complicated system that eventually paid out a miniscule R7000 to a small but unknown number of spaza shops and general dealers.
Mr President, we urge your government to ensure that access to finance means exactly that – and that viable projects don’t die in long queues and unprepared SEFA offices.
ELECTRICITY:
We agree that we must stay on the path outlined by the National Energy Action Plan, no matter how difficult times will be in the short term, to end loadshedding and, in parallel, implement a just transition to renewable energy.
But the country deserved a clear timeline and an explanation for the slippage that has already crept into the implementation of the plan.
Last July the President announced that generation capacity to be procured through REIPPPP Bid Window 6 would be doubled from 2600 MW to 5200 MW.
But the list of preferred bidders, announced on 8 December 2022, only provide a contracted capacity of 860MW.
It is not clear how a tax incentive will enable a large scale rollout of rooftop solar panels. This sounds like a scheme for the rich.
We propose, Mr President, that your government pursues the PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) funding model – which links the financing of expensive solar energy systems to property ownership where repayment is made through the property owners’ municipal rates account over a twenty year period. This will widely extend the financial ability of property owners to join the rooftop revolution.
Finally, Mr President, you were wrong to chase the DA down the proposed rabbit hole of an electricity State of Disaster.
We do not need a state of disaster to resolve our electricity crisis. The Public Finance Management Act and the Procurement regulations provide the space for government to do what it needs to do to fix Eskom.
We hope that the State of Disaster does not become an unnecessary distraction from the urgent work of ending loadshedding.
Thank you.
Media Enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 0825183264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Janke Tolmay, GOOD Media Manager
Cell: 0733671223
Email: janke@forgood.org.za