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DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko.

Restructuring education was at the core of creating the right environment to build the skills to fuel economic growth, DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko told the Cape Town Press Club yesterday.

Speaking ahead of President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation address at the opening of Parliament on Thursday, the parliamentary opposition leader said Zuma was most likely to focus on the need to create jobs within the context of 25 percent official unemployment.

“I have no doubt that the president will speak on Thursday about job creation. He needs to do so… unemployment is the biggest crisis our country faces at the moment.”

Closely linked to this was a rising crisis in education. People with appropriate skills for the economy’s needs and an optimal supply of teachers were challenges facing the country.

Dismissing the government’s plans to create 5 million jobs in 10 years, she said: “The government is the wrong tool to use to create jobs.”

She believed the DA’s economic growth target of 8 percent was realistic if South Africa – like Turkey and Brazil – removed barriers to growth such as legislative red tape and labour market inflexibility.

Emerging countries Turkey, India and Brazil had unemployment rates of 9 percent, 10 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively – far lower than in South Africa. The country should take another look at regulations stifling the market for its resources – from mineral rights to the labour market.

At the core of restoring the right economic balance was education. “If we neglect education, we don’t just neglect our future, we neglect our present.”

She said school principals and teachers should be required to sign performance contracts and minimum educational requirements should be put in place. Teachers who did not perform should be removed and training colleges for school teachers should be reopened.

Asked whether her party had devised any plan to tap into the teaching skills of “the white suburbs” for the upliftment of disadvantaged communities, she said that it was good to take skills to areas in need, but it was not the government’s or a political party’s job to control the movements of teachers or other people with skills.

“This perhaps is the job of NGOs,” she said.

She described Cosatu’s objection to the presence in South Africa of Walmart – which bought a controlling interest in Massmart – as unfounded. “Any multinational that chooses to settle in a country has to abide by the legislation in (that) country.”

It was wrong to believe that the R15 billion investment would lead to “substandard jobs” as alleged by the trade unions. - Donwald Pressly