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Skills
Revolution in the Making in South Africa
By Farah Khan, Inter Press Service |
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 CAPE
TOWN, Mar 24 (IPS) - The South African government is pioneering
a ''skills revolution'' to address the fallout of apartheid
education on an underskilled, badly paid workforce that threatens
to keep the country underdeveloped. |
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| The
skills revolution is the term Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana
uses to describe a massive national plan to match workplace
training with the needs of the growing economy as well as to
help the workforce to play catch-up. |
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| The
innovation is multi-pronged and involves the payment of a one
percent levy annually from government and business payrolls
to fund training by 27 sectorial education and training authorities
(SETAS). |
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These
SETAS match the most important sectors in the economy and
will identify the skills needed to improve the competitiveness
of each industry. Workers will be trained accordingly.
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| If
the innovation is successful, it should lead to a highly trained
workforce and to a more modern economy. ''This programme is
remarkable in the impact it will have on our economy and in
building a better life for all our people,'' says Mdladlana.
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| While
its target is the future, the skills development policy is meant
to address the past. Apartheid's planners determined that blacks
were ''born to be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water,''
in the words of Hendrik Verwoerd, the father of separate development.
. |
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| In
line with this philosophy, black children were starved of good
education. The apartheid government spent between four and seven
times more on white pupils than it did on black. |
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| The
impact on the democratic state inaugurated in 1994 has been
severe. Workers are poorly skilled and job-seekers cannot fill
posts in the new economic sectors like information technology
and financial services because many are not even functionally
literate. |
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| Those
who lose their jobs in sunset industries like mining and clothing
manufacturing cannot be re-employed because they are not and
cannot be made multi-skilled. Foreign and domestic investors
often cite the low skills base as a reason for not investing.
. |
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Says Mdladlana: ''Simply too few people have the knowledge and
skills to drive up the nation's productivity and thereby expand
the resources it needed to eradicate inequality and poverty.'' |
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| Fast-forward
to a picture of how things can be. In Kwazulu-Natal, pilot projects
are bearing fruit. The tourism and hospitality training authority
is putting the first tranche of 6,000 young learners through
their paces. |
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| They
are working in bed and breakfasts and running ecotourism resorts.
Their days are tough and pay-packets small, but in time, these
young people will be equipped with a package of skills that
means they could own their establishments. |
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| It's
not only about training entrepreneurs, but also about providing
investors with a pool of trained workers. In Port Elizabeth,
in the Eastern Cape, workers are already being trained to staff
a new South African Breweries plant. |
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| Policy-makers
hope South Africa can avert the globalisation pattern where
emerging economies are often synonymous with sweatshop working
conditions. They believe that if workers are adequately skilled
and productive, it can improve their quality of life, prospects
of work and labour mobility. |
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| The
European Union funded a significant proportion of South Africa's
new skills and training policy -- it's grant of R 276-million
is the EU's biggest ever technical assistance programme. (One
US dollar is equal to 6.3 rands.) |
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| For
Mdladlana, it is a contribution that will begin to help level
the global playing field. ''South African producers will become
increasingly well positioned to be real trading partners, expanding
the traditional trading highways between Northern countries
to include significant exchanges between the North and South,
and with Africa and South Africa in particular.'' |
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| Eighty
percent of the training funds collected by government will go
to training authorities or be paid as grants to companies which
already have their own training programmes in place. The remainder
of the funds will be used to train economically marginalised
people like the self-employed in survivalist enterprises, new
entrants and domestic workers. |
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| The
skills development and training plan will be implemented over
several years. SETA's have already been established, levies
are payable from April and training has commenced in several
pilot projects. |
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| This
article is free of copyright restrictions and can be reproduced
provided that Inter Press Service is credited. |
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