Inside Out Perspective: talk on SA's economy and job creation

Last Thursday evening I shared a platform at the Wanderers golf club with economist Mike Schussler and DA colleague Khume Ramulifho on the topic of jobs. The event was the second in a series organised by Dalu Cele, a councillor in the City of Joburg, aimed at giving the public perspectives on current issues from the outside (a guest speaker) and inside (two DA public representatives).

You can read my speech below.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to see you all here at the second Inside Out event organised by my colleagues Dalu Cele and Nicci Rahn.

I want to begin by offering a few thoughts on where political philosophy and ideology fit into our discourse on the economy and job creation.

Political philosophy and ideology have become very unfashionable words in South Africa. They have been supplanted by words such as vision, mission and brand identity, in a world where spin doctors like Lynton Crosby and faceless officials have come to dominate our language.

But we need to understand the political philosophies that underlie the main actors in South Africa’s polity to understand how economic policies flowing from them impact our daily lives.

The ANC, in government for close on 25 years, is fundamentally a socialist party with leanings towards Marxist Leninism.

This dates to the Freedom Charter but has greater expression in the National Democratic Revolution which is the driving force of ANC ideology. In the NDR, the state is the main actor in society and the economy.

Opinion piece in Business Live - why the Department of Small Business Development is still floundering

Today's edition of Business Live published my opinion piece which sums up why the Department of Small Business Development has failed SA.

You can read it here or the text version below.

These pages have carried a running commentary on the performance of the Department of Small Business Development since its proclamation in July 2014. Heralded by special interest groups as an overdue and bold move to boost government procurement from black-owned SMEs, derided by anti-interventionist types as evidence of more government bloat, it has been a punching bag in our politico-economic dialogue ever since.

Most recently, special advisor to Minister Lindiwe Zulu, Thami Mazwai, (“A mischievous attack”, 31^st January) rebutted a call by the Small Business’s Initiative’s Bernard Swanepoel to do away with the department and said Parliament’s portfolio committee “have not questioned the need for the department”. Only the ANC members support its continued existence, with most opposition MPs including the DA calling for its closure.

Motion without notice read in the National Assembly on the effects of uncontrolled immigration to SA

National AssemblyMotion Without Notice

Internal Ref Number:	067	-	2018
Date:	29.11.2018
Subject:	Securing our Borders

I hereby move, on behalf of the Democratic Alliance, that this House:

1.      notes that the former Minister in the Presidency, Mr. Jeff Radebe, reported to Parliament's Ad Hoc Committee Probing Violence Against Foreign Nationals in November 2015, that the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration estimated that there were between five (5) and six (6) million documented and undocumented foreign nationals in South Africa, or 10% of the population;

2.      further notes that studies by the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation found that up to 75% of spaza shops in Delft in Cape Town and Ivory Park in Johannesburg were owned or run by foreign nationals;

3.      recognises that the retail sector in our townships and rural areas has been dramatically affected as a result, leading to anger and resentment among former South African spaza shop owners; 

4.      acknowledges the periodic outbreaks of violence against foreign nationals since 2008 resulting from this anger, most recently in Soweto in August this year;

5.      and calls upon Government to accelerate the plan of action outlined in the Ad Hoc Committee's final report which includes securing our borders, professionalising our police service and improving access to jobs and small business development, so that long term solutions can be found that eliminate outbreaks of violence and lead to a thriving locally owned retail sector once again.

I so move.

T CHANCE MP

Declaration in the National Assembly on Vote 31 of the budget adjustments

 Declaration on Vote 31 of Votes and Schedules 
28^th November 2018

Small Business Development

South Africa and this House have heard the ANC speak ad nauseam about the central role small businesses play, or should play, in our economy.

But the plain fact is, with economic growth of less than 1% our economy and the fortunes of small business are going backwards, not forwards.

This department is but a blip on the radar of small businesses struggling to survive a deluge of red tape, inaccessible government support and an unfriendly business environment.

It is totally irrelevant to the vast majority of them. With the result that it is incapable of making a dent in the 9,7 million unemployment queue.

Small businesses have the potential to create millions of jobs in South Africa but this department has shown little capacity to be the driver of government initiatives to make this happen.

The DA rejects this budget adjustment.

Statement by the IMF team after visiting South Africa

The IMF was recently in SA to assess the state of our economy. Their report bears, in parts, a striking resemblance to what I said in my speech yesterday about what is needed to stimulate economic growth, particularly the second bullet in paragraph 4.

You can read the report here.

Speech in the National Assembly: Growth the pre-requisite for jobs

Yesterday the National Assembly debated the DA's motion on access to jobs and I was selected as a speaker alongside my colleagues Geordin Hill-Lewis (who sponsored the motion) and Gwen Ngwenya.

While the topic was access to jobs, we agreed that my speech should focus on what was required to create the jobs in the first place, i.e. measures to stimulate economic growth.

You can view the debate on YouTube here, my speech starts at 4:13:20.

You can read Geordin's speech here and Gwen's here.

The ANC were on the defensive from the beginning and had nothing to offer the country by way of solutions: they are out of ideas, incompetent, corrupt and stuck in an economic paradigm that will never create broad, inclusive prosperity in SA.

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Just a few days ago I was in conversation with a Wits masters student about the future of South Africa. She said she was seriously considering emigrating to the UK, following many of her friends who had left South Africa in the past few years. Her reason? The jobs situation here is so bad, and prospects in the UK are better, even with Brexit looming.

What really concerned me is that she and the friends she referred to are young, black professionals – the sort of people our country needs to be a successful nation.

ANC government’s late payments killing small business development and jobs

Date: 20 November 2018

Release: Immediate

Note to Editors: This statement follows a press briefing by the Democratic Alliance (DA) Spokesperson on Access to Jobs, Geordin Hill-Lewis MP, the DA Shadow Minister of Small Business Development, Toby Chance MP, and small business owner Bobby Mabe, on the scourge of late payments by the ANC government which threaten critical jobs. Small businesses are the life-blood of the South African economy, contributing nearly 60 % of the labour force and 34% of GDP. However, the reality is that, some 80% of South African small businesses fail within the first three years of activity. Many of these businesses fail because of unnecessary burdens placed on them such as late payments.