Speaker
My Colleagues in Cabinet
Honourable Leader of the Opposition
Honourable Leaders of political parties
Honourable Members
Acting Director-General, Heads of Departments, members of the new Senior Management Service corps
Distinguished guests

Booker Prize winning novelist, John Berger, writes about Antonio Gramsci and defines his most unique and enduring capacity in the following manner:

The least dogmatic of our century's thinkers about revolution was Antonio Gramsci. His lack of dogmatism came from a kind of patience. This patience had absolutely nothing to do with indolence or complacency His special patience came from a sense of practice which will never end. He saw close-up, and sometimes directed the political struggles of his time, but he never forgot the background of an unfolding drama whose span covers incalculable ages. It was perhaps this which prevented Gramsci becoming, like many revolutionaries, a millennialist. He believed in hope rather than promises and hope is a long affair.₁

This sensibility underpins President Thabo Mbeki's assertion that South Africa is in its Age of Hope, and the Western Cape Province's Hope, that we are on the Threshold of Prosperity. This Hope is neither transcendental nor sentimental, but founded on patience and endless human practice. It locates each one of us within an unfolding human drama in which we shun both dogmatism and complacency.

Our role in the drama is taking shape. We saw the urgency in 2002 already when the Desai Commission alerted us to our challenge: "During the course of the Commission's work, it was introduced to an environment in which fear and intrigue stalked the corridors of the Administration. The Commission trusts that those in authority will have the courage, determination and vision to introduce and foster a changed culture essential to transparent and accountable governance."

When I delivered my first budget speech for the Department of the Premier in 2004, we set out to respond to the challenge of building a Modern African State by laying the philosophical foundations of the state as developmental. We understood that to depart from the kind of state that the Desai Commission warned us about was to orient the state towards achieving the objectives of the National Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals for our Province.

I proposed to you then the blueprint of a state that was integrated in itself, cooperative in its relations with other spheres of government, responsive to its citizens and partners, and globally-connected for its relevance.

In my 2005 Budget Speech for the Department of the Premier I warned that the path towards a Development State would require deep transformation. I proposed a process that would see the reengineering of the Centre of the State, in which that Centre would gather together a skills set, drawn from the best of those inside and outside of the Administration, capable of giving leadership, setting the policy agenda and driving the implementation of the strategy.

Mr Speaker, in my third Budget Speech as Premier, I can report to this House that we have achieved both sets of objectives, and we are now ready to clarify the next scene of the unfolding drama of building and rewarding the Hope that Antonio Gramsci speaks about.

We in this Province are not alone in this unfolding drama. We are part of a global concern that seeks to consolidate hope by defining a Shared Growth path - that which we call iKapa elihlumayo - and building social cohesion while nurturing diversity - what we envision as a Home for All.

Recently I was invited to join a gathering of progressive world leaders convened by President Mbeki at the Progressive Governance Summit precisely because what we are doing in this Province resonates with the hopes of the world to find a path to social justice, economic equity and a way of living together in the face of terrorism, intolerance and marginalisation.

Endless human practice, as Gramsci would have told such world leaders, would insist that the path to such a future is based on analysis, planning and strategy. Analysis, planning and strategy draw from the global to the local and inform from the local to the global.

In the context of South Africa, our Province is required to fashion a Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) out of the National Spatial Development Perspective and, in turn, ensure that the Integrated Development Plans of all local governments are in this single image. This ensures both coherence and allows us all to work tangibly to create a better life for all our people.

Last year Minister Mufamadi's department published guidelines on what a PGDS is. According to the Guidelines,

The PGDS is based on a long-term view of the province's development trajectory. Drawing on the NSDP and the MTSF and working within a sustainable development paradigm, the primary purpose of the PGDS is to provide a collaborative framework to drive implementation within the province. It is not a provincial government plan, but a developmental framework for the province as a whole.

We are about to finalise what we think this developmental framework for the Western Cape is. It will be the raison'dêtre of my department and this government. According to renowned planning theorist, Prof Patsy Healey, it will introduce the most radical and far-reaching changes seen in terms of the approach we have adopted. She argues that:

...strategy-making is a process of deliberative paradigm change. It aims to change cultural conceptions, systems of understanding and systems meaning. It is more than just producing collective decisions. It is about shifting and re-shaping convictions.₃

At the heart of the PGDS is the paradigm of shared growth and integrated development. As we proceed to engage our social partners and the citizenry at large over the next few months, I believe we will be able to make this development paradigm hegemonic, not least because its seeds have already been sown by the iKapa Elihlumayo processes that have unfolded over the past few years, including the Growth and Development Summit of 2003.

Our paradigm intimates that shared growth and integrated development can only be achieved when five imperatives are strategically linked, in balance and elevated to the level of development principles.

These imperatives are:

i) economic growth
ii) social equity
iii) environmental integrity
iv) empowerment; and
v) spatial integration.

The PGDS argues that in the context of massive unemployment, perverse income inequalities, deep social divides and the potential marginalisation of our national economy from the global economy, our priority must be the achievement of much higher rates of growth as the springboard for dealing with the range of intractable challenges we face.

Higher rates of growth on their own are not sufficient; it is the nature of growth that is critical. We must ensure that higher rates of growth are combined with greater social equity that will enable the poor and economically excluded to gain the means to participate in the economy and build their own sources of empowerment, combined with effective protection of the natural resource base of the province. Lastly, growth must not worsen spatial apartheid and inefficiencies, as it has in the first decade of freedom. It must make life more convenient and affordable for the majority of our people who are desperate to access economic, social and ecological opportunities.

The PGDS - iKapa elihlumayo - sets out how our Province will achieve a shared growth and integrated development path. Following the logic of acupuncture, it will entail more targeted action, more strategic investment, better leadership and greater effectiveness and co-operation from government in the Western Cape.

The PGDS is the further evolution of that which has already been brought to this House in the form of the eight iKapa elihlumayo strategies: Spatial Development, Social Capital, Human Capital, Micro-Economic, Strategic Infrastructure, and the three Governance Strategies. These will now need refocusing so that, in turn, they achieve the practical objectives I set out in my State of the Province Address earlier this year as the Battle Plan for Shared Growth.

They are, by way of reminder:

• economic participation;
• infrastructure that connects;
• effective public transport;
• sustainable integrated human settlements;
• resilient communities;
• a culture of tolerance, respect and engagement; and
• effective governance institutions.

However, the global and national targets we have been set for 2014, require even greater levels of galvanisation and harnessing of energies, resources and talents. This, therefore, means the immediate pursuit of five path breaking interventions, all of which are germane to any growth path, some of which needed work from a long time ago, and others which have emerged as urgent either because we face a moment of crisis or opportunity. These are the five interventions which cabinet has grappled with and which needs urgent implementation.

Firstly, addressing the crisis in Public Transport that serves as a brake on the economy, social engagement, community safety and environmental integrity. I believe that if there is only one success this PGDS achieves, it must be the turn-around of the state of public transport. The numerous plans to establish an integrated, multi-modal, safe and affordable system must now be put into practice. The World Cup challenges us to make sure that the first elements of this system come into being before 2010. Concretely, we have potentially achieved an important milestone to find additional sources of revenue to invest in transport infrastructure through the provisional approval of the proposed fuel levy for the Western Cape. The Finance and Fiscal Commission has indicated that we are on the right path in supplementing our revenue base and our feasibility research is sound. This is a major breakthrough after four years. Of course we endorse their call for deeper consultation.

Secondly, maximising the opportunities surrounding the 2010 World Cup in terms of growing tourism and related sectors of our regional economy, promoting healthy lifestyles choices amongst the youth and kick-starting urgently needed infrastructure investments to improve the flow of people and goods. This ambition has been given renewed impetus by the agreement we recently achieved between the Mayor and myself that the establishment of a special purpose vehicle must be expedited through provincial legislation. Furthermore, the national meeting we attended with the LOC has cemented the resolve to host the World Cup at a new Green Point Stadium. In light of these encouraging developments, I am convinced that the World Cup build-up and legacy will greatly enhance our development ambitions for the province. It is now time for all of us in the province to unite behind efforts for World Cup 2010 and ensure that we do indeed host an event that will firmly lodge the Western Cape in the world's mind as a must-see place. The Cape soccer fraternity is already enthusiastic as big crowds viewed Santos and Hanover Park recently. Even Vasco da Gama put up a spirited victorious performance against Bush Bucks over the weekend.

Thirdly, the energy wake-up call we received recently in the Western Cape is a potential threat to higher rates of economic growth over the medium-term. However, higher rates of investment in energy also create an opportunity to pursue a more diversified portfolio of energy technologies which can position the Western Cape to grow the size of its environmental industries. In this regard great progress is being made through the planned investments by Eskom that have been brought forward. The two Open Cycle Gas Turbines are under construction as I speak in Atlantis and Mossel Bay, due for completion in a year's time, and feasibility work on a second base plant is about to be finalised which will result in major investment decisions to be implemented over the 2007-2010 period. The latter initiative introduces the debate in this Province on the source of energy for such a base station. The transport of coal is expensive and the gas supplies are not yet reliable. The nuclear energy debate is one all of us must participate in.

Fourthly, fixing the serious skills mismatch between what the regional economy needs and what comes onto the labour market from the education system has become the main disjuncture in our society and economy, fuelling inequality. This matter is beginning to receive priority attention and our Province is leading through the R70m recapitalisation of our FET Colleges underpinned by a R25m loan scheme. The establishment of focus schools responding to the variety of skills needs in the province similarly path-breaking. Only last week saw the opening of an Engineering Focus School in Mitchell's Plain, and planning for Institutes for Contemporary Music responds to the Western Cape emerging strongly as a creative centre in the country.

Finally, the Western Cape's Asgisa project - The Cape Flats Renewal Programme - must come to fruition as the whole country rallies behind this extraordinary intervention to ratchet up growth through, primarily, infrastructure-driven programmes. Given that this intervention coincides spatially where the majority of poor people reside in the province, it is also appropriate that it is part of the highest priorities of the PGDS.

Our draft PGDS will be unveiled next month for public engagement. It is fully compliant with the following sentiment in the PGDS Guidelines:

The PGDS is the core alignment mechanism for the province and it should be seen as the coordination and implementation strategy. While driven by the province and championed by the Premier, this must be on the basis of a collaborative effort that brings all parties to the table.

Given that we are advanced in our province towards a PGDS, I now want to turn to the implementation vehicles we will have to establish and overhaul to implement our development strategy for the Province.

The PGDS is fundamentally about coordination, alignment and integration across provincial government departments, between spheres of government between different state bodies and between government and its social partners.

This will work only with a strong policy centre at the heart of government. This requires a more focused Cabinet that can systematically drive the strategy agenda of iKapa elihlumayo as it cascades into the priorities and actions of all actors in the province. In this context we inaugurated the new, more strategically focused, Cabinet system which sees the introduction of an implementation orientated and alignment-focussed approach.

The new Cabinet system is underpinned by a much more coherent policy centre in government. The reengineering process of my department has now brought into being a formidable policy team at the centre of government. In its establishment and operationalisation, the new policy nerve centre in my Department will work hand-in-glove with the economic and budgetary policy analysis capacity in Provincial Treasury and the team of municipal analysts in the Department of Housing and Local Government. Already, the three entities have learnt to work together and hone their skills in the development so far of the PGDS.

Our Cabinet system and the policy capacity has been timed to anticipate what, over the last year, has been a veritable revolution in inter-governmental relations and planning in South Africa, consolidated by the Inter-Governmental Relations Act of 2005. On the basis of the IGR Act, the President's Coordinating Council has become the supreme forum for driving an aligned agenda of delivery across the spheres of government. The agenda of the PCC is the priorities spelled out in the Medium-Term Strategic Framework and the National Spatial Development Perspective, which are largely translated into the National Programme of Action. It is assumed that all Provinces and Municipalities must reflect the implications of the National Programme of Action in their respective development agendas (PGDS and IDPs). I am compelled by the IGR Act to use the Premier's Coordinating Forum (PCF) to ensure exactly such alignment.

Thus, in the following year we will see much greater emphasis being placed on strong and meaningful inter-governmental planning and engagement in the province, based on the NSDP and the PGDS. In light of the political fragility in many municipalities in the province, I am determined to use the instruments of the IGR Act to engender calm and stability and ensure a focus on service delivery so that we can all work single-mindedly to achieve the strategic goals of the PGDS, iKapa elihlumayo. Just because we have local governments governed by coalitions, with the ongoing prospects of changes as coalitions may change, does not mean that the public should suffer through inefficiencies, poor service delivery or political brinkmanship.

The PCF will drive co-ordination of the activities of government, national departments, state owned enterprises and special purpose agencies that operate in the province to engage on the unique regional dynamics of the Western Cape so that these are appropriately reflected and accommodated in national policy frameworks, programmes, projects and funding protocols, as well as monitor the cumulative impact of development in the Western Cape as we proceed with accelerated delivery.

The Provincial Spatial Development Framework alerted us last year to the geographical way in which our populations are moving, and in which economic opportunities are concentrating, and its impact on the natural resource base of the province. If these factors are going to be key drivers for the implementation of the PGDS, then political boundaries may not be the most useful way in which to conceive of development planning for Shared Growth. If anything, shared growth and integrated development would have a geographical logic that would cross the political boundaries of municipalities.

What is emerging at this stage are three Development Planning Regions. The Premier's Coordinating Forum would soon have to discuss formalising these Regions to facilitate appropriate growth and development to coordinate better and harness expenditure and investment more intelligently.

The Cape Town Functional Region, including Saldanha, Paarl, Worcester, Stellenbosch and parts of the Overberg, if we plan its future together will harness some of the most productive industrial resources of the Province and consolidate itself as our economic powerhouse. Already, 85% of general value added in the provincial economy comes from this area.

The South Cape urban strip from Plettenberg Bay to Mossel Bay is showing remarkable growth potential which requires coordinated planning and appropriately targeted and sequenced investments.

The rest of the Province - The Cape Hinterland - must effectively be strengthened in its agricultural capacity and requires planning to strengthen it to empower its citizens with social interventions and the development of their human capacity.

This today, is a bold debate we want to open up so that we can best ensure the future of all our people and the quickest way to reach our growth and development targets.

Our Province has shown, for the last two years, a consistent growth rate of 5.3% and has been able to attract significant investments. The most recent announcement by MAN Ferrostaal of R1.7bn over five years for a rig service facility in the Cape Town Harbour and a fabrication yard in Saldanha is a mere indication of our potential in the Province.

This means that we need stronger relationships with the business community, but not only in the Province. The Western Cape is facing increasing competition from products we have traditionally exported and we are having to see off fierce challenges from countries like New Zealand (in film) and India (in business process outsourcing).

However, the goodwill towards us is so great that significant global, national and domestic business leaders are keen to serve us in an advisory capacity. Such an Advisory Panel will be convened towards the end of the year as a platform from which we can improve economic performance and reach our growth targets.

One of the distinct comparative advantages of the Western Cape is that we have four Universities based here, as well as the large footprint of Unisa. Yet we have been slow in harnessing this invaluable resource. We have convened all the Vice-Chancellors late last year to discuss how we can partner to each other's mutual advantage. Since then there has been a series of close interactions with the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC), which represents the Universities, to work towards a Joint Programme of Action for Shared Growth in the province. This work will culminate in a Provincial Government-Higher Education Institutions Summit later this year. At the Summit we will adopt a Cooperation Agreement that will facilitate alignment between the priorities of the Universities and our Scarce Skills Strategies for the realisation of our Ikapa elihlumayo strategies.

Strategic partnerships with key investors and the universities complement the institutionalised, partnership-based, social dialogue partners in the PDC. During 2006 we will focus our engagements on the PGDS. This process will involve an extensive array of engagements with all segments of society so that we can build a vibrant democratic foundation for a consensus on, and the implementation of, our shared growth and integrated development agenda. The priorities and monitoring indicators of the PGDS will also enhance the work of the PDC because engagements will be based on budgetary priorities and departmental actions.

All our objectives, strategies and partnerships will come to naught unless we can address the capacity of the State. We have been working at this challenge in a radical and systematic fashion since the first day that I took office. I am finally in a position to report considerable progress on this front.

On the 1 April 2006 the new, fully reengineered Department of the Premier came into being. Since then the new, representative and highly qualified leadership of the Department has begun their work. Over two thirds of the new SMS have post-graduate qualifications reflecting the diverse and deep skills base we sought to attract. They bring with them many years of experience in both the Public and Private sector. Their strengths span generic areas such as in personnel, finance, legal and IT management, but also the skills related to policy development, implementation and review.

They will bring to government a capacity for full policy coherence and alignment through the lens of the PGDS. They will give leadership in a series of human and social capital interventions to address the skills, orientation, behavioural and management capacities of the Administration to ensure effective implementation of the Shared Growth agenda.

The new SMS is also broadly representative of the provincial demographics of the labour force in the Western Cape. We have now filled 46 out of 53 posts. Of the 46, 31% is African, 45% Coloured and 24% White. Of the 46 posts we have improved the representation of women from 9% in 2004 to 33% so far. Where we need drastic action across government is in the representivity of people with disabilities. These demographic figures represent a fundamental break with the skewed and exclusionary patterns that I inherited two years ago, especially where we only had a single African person in the SMS. In the remaining appointments we will seek to improve even further on the representation of especially Coloured people and women without being overly mechanical.

In Conclusion

Mr Speaker, the core of this third budget speech of mine as Premier revolved around the PGDS increasingly realising a Shared Prosperity for the Western Cape. That this is more possible is so only because we have done some of the hard work of deep institutional transformation in this Province.

Yet, even as we speak here today, the urgency of what we must still do echoes all over this Province. The lives of many are still defined by poverty, unemployment, violence, and pathologies which emerge therefrom. There are daily battles between ordinary citizens and their instruments like the police on the one hand, and forces who believe that the conditions of poverty give them the right to conduct themselves unlawfully and illegally. I refer here to gangsters and druglords, but also refer to those who initially earned our sympathy because they do the dangerous work of protecting us for very little remuneration. But in the course of a legal strike for legitimate objectives, they have conducted themselves in a way that makes us even wonder whether they can be trusted to be the custodians of what we regard as precious in our Province. I have no doubt that, led by the police, we will continue to protect our leaders, our citizens, our commuters and our prosperity against any acts of illegality.

Mr Speaker, over the past while, our vision of making this Province a Home for All has been seriously challenged. The run up to the Local Government elections have reversed some of the racial harmony and social cohesion we have sought to build. The outcomes of the elections and the existence of unstable coalitions have begun to threaten some of the hard-won stability achieved in this Province. Most significantly, we see the spectre of polarisation, exclusion and division in the Western Cape.

Does this mean that the vision of a Home for All has failed and is unworkable? When Chief Albert Luthuli first verbalised this vision, it was met with three decades of absolute state brutality. Adopting the sensibility of Gramsci that hope is a long affair, we simply need to be more tenacious and work harder to realise the vision of a Home for All.

The year 2006 allows us two significant opportunities to give impetus to our vision of a Home for All. Together with the rest of the country, June will see us celebrating the courage, and commemorating the sacrifices, made by the youth in 1976. The Western Cape Youth Commission together with government and youth formations are planning a month of activities that will honour the past, but will lay the foundations of unity for the future.

Similarly, we will celebrate fifty years of the march by women to the Union Buildings, not simply displaying their displeasure as women with Apartheid, but forever laying down their right to be equal citizens, fully integrated into our society.

In both these celebrations, the Provincial Government Departments are hard at work to deliver concretely to youth and women that which I undertook as part of our Siyabulela Campaign. I now call upon this House and the citizens and organisations of this Province to nominate those - either departed or still living - from the ranks of youth and women, who they believe are worthy of the highest honours that the Western Cape can bestow on its citizens so that we can elevate their example and hold them up as the symbols of our freedom and unity, and the architects of our Home for All.

References:

1. Berger, J. (2001). The Shape of a Pocket. London: Bloomsbury, p.233.
2. South African Government (2005). Provincial Growth and Development Strategy Guidelines. Pretoria: DPLG and The Presidency.
3. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. London: Macmillan