President Ramaphosa’s Address at the 2018 Jobs Summit

President Ramaphosa’s Address at the 2018 Jobs Summit

The 2018 Jobs Summit was held on 4 and 5 October at the Gallagher Estate Convention Centre in Johannesburg. Government, business, labour and community organisations came together over these two days to discuss job creation as well as the challenges faced by each social partner in the creation of jobs.

At the two-day event, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa gave an opening address. During his address, he said that unemployment is the greatest challenge facing South Africa at this moment in its history.

“Unemployment diminishes our ability to eradicate poverty, tackle inequality and improve the lives of the working class and poor. It has a devastating effect on families and communities, eroding people’s dignity and contributing to social problems like poor health, poor education outcomes, substance abuse and crime”, said Ramaphosa.

In the National Development Plan, the South African government said that we should aim to reduce unemployment to at least 6% by 2030. At the Jobs Summit, Ramaphosa said that we need to acknowledge that we will not be able to reach that target unless we do something extraordinary.

“Since the announcement of the Jobs Summit in the State of the Nation Address in February, all social partners have been engaged in intensive discussions to craft an agreement to begin to address this crisis. I wish to commend all social partners for the hard work that has gone into making this Jobs Summit possible and to thank everyone who has contributed to organising this summit”, said Ramaphosa.

Countries that have succeeded in tackling economic challenges and social problems have had the benefit of getting all social partners to reach agreement on what needs to be done and to work together to ensure that it gets done. Social accords have been forged to respond to economic difficulty in countries like Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands, but this has yet to happen in South Africa.

“In South Africa, with low levels of trust, weak confidence and heightened social tensions, we have neglected our greatest strength as a society – our ability to unite and work together. It was by working together that we managed to overcome apartheid, which we brought an end to an intractable conflict that had raged for generations, and were able to write a democratic Constitution that guarantees the equal rights of all”, said Ramaphosa.

Jobs Summit Accord and Framework Agreement

He said that the Jobs Summit is not a once-off event, but the first phase of an extensive process in which all social partners will work closely together to improve growth, protect existing jobs and create new jobs.

On 4 October, all social partners formally declared their commitment to the Jobs Summit Accord and Framework Agreement that is both ambitious and realizable. Ramaphosa said the framework is the product of intensive engagement among the social partners over several months, in a spirit of cooperation and consensus building to address a problem that affects all of us.

“Importantly, the framework provides the outline of an emerging social compact to grow an inclusive economy and fundamentally transform our society”, said Ramaphosa.
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