The Western Cape Government has launched its Provincial Strategic Plan (PSP): 2014-2019, which sets out our vision and strategic priorities for our second term in office.
It is our plan to create conditions for economic growth, provide better education, and deliver better health, safety and social services to our citizens.
It builds on the firm foundations we put in place during our first term in office. Since then our population has grown and our budgets, in real terms, are shrinking.
Our PSP sets out our five strategic goals, each backed by a plan to maintain continuous improvement in the lives of citizens. These are:
lStrategic goal one: Creating opportunities for growth and jobs;
lStrategic goal two: Improving education outcomes and opportunities for youth development;
lStrategic goal three: Increasing wellness, safety and tackling social ills;
lStrategic goal four: Enabling a resilient, sustainable, quality and inclusive living environment; and
lStrategic goal five: Embedding good governance and integrated service delivery through partnerships and spatial alignment.
But there is an important additional element to our approach during our second term. Through widespread consultation, we have selected several priority projects, that we call “game-changers”, because they have the potential to be catalysts for substantial improvements in people’s lives.
These are:
lAchieving energy security;
lRapid growth in three key economic sectors with the highest potential for new jobs;
lDelivery of high-speed broadband across the province;
lTesting effective e-learning models in our schools;
lCreating real after-school opportunities for young people to participate in sport, cultural and academic activities;
lTackling alcohol abuse;
lProviding water and decent sanitation that exceeds the basic national minimum standard; and
lPioneering an integrated living model that can pave the way for restructuring the apartheid legacy of our cities and towns.
We are currently designing detailed action plans – through an intensive process we call design laboratories – we will be publicly release, together with measurable outcomes and defined timelines.
Economic growth and jobs remain our number one priority.
The province’s economy grew by 2.3 percent last year, outpacing national economic growth, during a year of bleak economic prospects. The Western Cape has the lowest broad unemployment rate in the country – 24.5 percent – which is a full 10.1 percent below the national broad unemployment rate.
However, youth unemployment remains a particular challenge everywhere, including our province.
Until now, the biggest blockage to economic lift-off has been policy uncertainty created by national government, and the countless job-crushing laws and regulations that are described as “red tape”.
But even these have now been trumped by our current energy crisis. Simply put, if there is no energy, there is no economy.
President Zuma obviously is not serious about solving this crisis when he insists on maintaining Eskom’s monopoly and pursuing the unaffordable Russian nuclear deal that, even if it gets off the ground, cannot deliver any power for the next 15 years. We need viable alternatives now.
That is why energy security has to be a game-changer. Last week, we hosted the first design lab to identify the most effective interventions to achieve energy security, involving almost every key strategic thinker on this important topic.
Our second game-changer is called Project Khulisa and aims to achieve significant growth in three economic sectors best placed to create jobs:
lTourism, including business and leisure tourism, as well as niche tourist markets;
lAgri-processing to add value to a range of agricultural products; and
lServicing the growing oil and gas sector, particularly through mid-stream services such as rig repair.
Project Khulisa also focuses on ensuring that we have the right infrastructure, services and skills to support the growth of these (and other) sectors.
We already know that tourism is a major contributor to job creation in the Western Cape, pumping R17 billion into the economy and underpinning 204 000 formal jobs.
We believe the sector can contribute even more.
However, this will be impossible if our visa regulations chase visitors away. We are pleased that during his Sona address, President Zuma promised a review of these regulations in order to strike a balance between what he termed “national security “and tourism growth.
We must also try to prevent the peaks and troughs in our tourism industry by growing niche markets during the winter months.
The second high growth sector is agri-processing. Using regions that have revolutionised their agri-processing sectors, we have concluded it is possible for this sector’s economic contribution to grow over 100 percent by 2019, adding a further 100 000 jobs.
Again, we are dependent on externalities, like reliable energy and consistent, clean water and the macro policy climate to attract investment.
It also requires bringing down barriers to exports and entering into trade agreements with the Brics and fellow African countries, our natural trading partners.
Appropriate skills, and high-level research and development are also critical to the success of this sector.
We have identified key opportunities to address these challenges, which we are in the process of evaluating.
Project Khulisa’s third priority arises out of the burgeoning oil and gas sector off the African coastline. Currently, the oil and gas sector accounts for 35 000 formal jobs in the province.
Looking at similar initiatives elsewhere in the world, we estimate that we could more than double this number by 2019 under a high growth scenario where the Saldanha IDZ becomes the key logistics hub of Africa for the oil and gas services industry.
However, in order to achieve this we need to overcome two major challenges.
Firstly, the Saldanha Bay IDZ requires additional infrastructure to undertake rig repair at shore. Secondly, we lack the skills that the oil and gas sector requires.
That is why we welcome the national government’s recently launched Operation Phakisa (accelerate).
The first phase of the project is focused on unlocking the economic potential of South Africa’s oceans and includes two major infrastructure projects valued at around R10 billion for the Saldanha IDZ.
We will host design laboratories over the next few months with the oil and gas industry and further education institutions to design a “rig repair skills action plan” with clear targets and timelines.
It is important to note that the three prongs of Project Khulisa will not displace the many other sectors in our economy that contribute to increasing investment, jobs and growth.
Affordable broadband connectivity is essential for economic growth. That is why access to high-speed broadband to all residents in the province is also a game-changer and is already well under way.
Our government will be providing broadband connectivity to approximately 2 000 Western Cape Government sites, including 1 250 schools, through our partnership with the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) and Neotel by July 2016.
Our fourth game-changer is the piloting of e-learning in our schools.
This game-changer falls under strategic goal two: Improving education outcomes and opportunities for youth development and is designed to make a major contribution towards improving the quality of teaching and learning in the province.
We have allocated nearly R730 million over the next three years to establish ICT infrastructure and e-learning in schools.
On the spine of the wide area network, the Western Cape Education Department is developing local area networks (LAN) to connect our schools and classrooms. We aim to install a LAN in 610 schools over the next five years.
The explosion of educational material and increasingly affordable hardware is creating a new area of technology-rich smart classrooms.
A total of 3 350 classrooms across 248 schools will benefit from our Smart Classroom Project over the next five financial years and 500 of our poorest schools will also receive refreshed computer labs.
Another major investment in young people is proper after-school programmes. That is why our fifth game-changer focuses on expanding after-school programmes to youth across the province. We call it the Youth With Hope Game Changer.
We aim to do this by using our Mass Participation Opportunity and Development (MOD) programme to create after-school centres of excellence, building on our partnerships with the city, non-governmental organisations and the private sector in general.
We have selected 16 pilot sites across the province, with a particular emphasis on the gang hot-spot areas.
In addition, we are planning a path-breaking intervention in Manenberg, where a unique opportunity exists to transform the large vacant spaces of school land, currently primarily used as a gang war zone, to develop a pioneering and safe Youth Lifestyle Campus.
A Youth Lifestyle Campus is a safe place – incorporating a number of facilities – which together can become a hive of learning, healthcare, sports, arts and recreation for young people.
Plans for the Lifestyle Campus will be in incorporated in the city’s spatial framework for Manenberg, which will be completed by mid-year. We will be calling for proposals for innovative designs for this new Lifestyle Campus concept to provide real opportunities in a safe environment for the young people of Manenberg.
Our third strategic goal is increasing wellness, and safety, and tackling social ills.
This includes the provision of health care to 74 percent of citizens living in the province. This figure continues to grow as a result of in-migration. Our budget allocation through the equitable share formula has not nearly kept pace, which has forced us to change our approach to meet an ever-growing demand with fewer resources. This has culminated in our Healthcare 2030 strategy, which signals an important shift from treating illness to maintaining wellness.
We have to prevent preventable diseases. This requires citizens to take responsibility for their health and wellbeing. It requires safe sex, responsible drinking, healthy eating, regular exercise, and abstaining from smoking and drug abuse.
Increasing safety in our communities is another key priority under strategic goal three.
While we have no jurisdiction over the police, the provincial Department of Community Safety is doing what it can, within its limited mandate, to improve safety in our communities through innovative partnerships.
Alcohol abuse is the biggest single threat to achieving our goal of increasing wellness, safety and reducing social ills in the province.
This is why our game-changer under strategic goal three is tackling alcohol abuse.
We will host design laboratories over the next few months to put together a detailed plan to tackle alcohol abuse, which we will pilot in a specific community such as Nyanga where alcohol is the main driver of high levels of inter personal violence and crime.
Strategic goal four is enabling a resilient, sustainable, quality and inclusive living environment in the province.
Building integrated sustainable human settlements remains one of our top priorities but also one of our biggest challenges.
That is why we have identified two game-changers under this strategic goal namely, water and decent sanitation for all. We are also pioneering an integrated living model as a pilot for restructuring the apartheid legacy of our cities and towns.
Despite the Western Cape having the highest percentage of households with access to water and sanitation in the country, we recognise there is room for improvement above the basic national norm. Our water and decent sanitation for all game-changer will focus on achieving this outcome in consultation with communities. Our final game-changer is focused on improving spatial integration in Cape Town.
Currently too many poorer families live furthest from employment opportunities and amenities. Growing urbanisation and an acute shortage of well-located and affordable housing closer to the central business district (CBD) makes this situation worse.
Our game-changer will explore a new residentially-led integrated living model for human settlement.
It will include not only affordable housing, but encompass a “live, work, play” philosophy where residents have a range of services and opportunities close to where they live and easy access to public transport.
We intend this game-changer will serve as a model to unlock other state property sites for integrated residential projects.
Finally, strategic goal five seeks to embed good governance and integrated service delivery through partnerships and spatial alignment.
None of our other plans can be realised without a capable state and strong partnerships with all stakeholders in our society.
We are working for the Western Cape to succeed, so that South Africa can succeed.
l This is an edited version of Premier Zille’s State of the Province address.