by Nontlantla Skenjana

Afesis-corplan hosts quarterly seminars on topical issues and the most recent tackled electoral matters as we sought to find out what political parties, government agencies and civil society thought should be done for the Eastern Cape.

The seminar sought to identify what ails the Eastern Cape and see whether political parties are responding to these issues. The main presentations came from the Eastern Cape Socio-economic Consultative Council’s Siv Hesjedal, followed by presentations from political parties.

The presentation made by Hesjedal (from ECSECC) discussed the social economy of the Eastern Cape and approached the topic from the angle of the recent assessment of the Provincial Growth and Development Plan (PGDP) undertaken by ECSECC for the provincial government.

The PGDP, Hesjedal noted, was a very progressive document which understood the socio-economic status of the Eastern Cape. It included fourteen targets which have been grouped into six pillars, namely, agrarian transformation, poverty eradication, manufacturing diversification, infrastructure, public sector and institutional transformation and human resource development.

At its inception, the PGDP was hailed as a holistic development plan which would lead to a more viable province in a mere decade. However, this has remained a dream for ordinary citizens of the Eastern Cape as the benefits outlined in the PGDP continued to elude people on the ground. Many reasons have been cited for the indifferent implementation of the PGDP, but ECSECC has identified the following challenges:

• the absence of an overarching national development plan;
• the decline in housing delivery and an increase in poverty, food insecurity, TB and HIV/Aids is a worrying combination;
• insufficient planning, capacity, support, and evidence-based planning;
• inadequate resources for implementation; and
• the lack of proactive leadership to champion and drive the policy and implementation agenda.

It was recommended that there needs to be serious transformation in the way things are done as a response to the above challenges and concerns were raised on the Public Sector and Institutional Transformation, Agrarian Transformation and Poverty Eradication pillars, in particular.

The major concern in Public Sector Transformation pillar was the lack of leadership, capacity and the corruption that was found in government offices, be it in recruitment, project implementation or procurement processes. This issue generated debate as a Mr Ntaphane of the UDM pointed out that if the leadership was corrupt, the citizens would be corrupt – indirectly referring to the ANC President and his advisor. Mr Mileham from the DA felt that corruption could be dealt with if proper systems were in place and the right people were employed regardless of the their political affiliation and rewarded through a functional performance management system. The general feeling was that corruption needs to be exposed and uprooted as a matter of urgency if any development programmes are to be a success.

With the global economic and climatic instability, Hesjedal felt that there may be an opportunity for the undeveloped countries to create production baskets, improve food security and sell the surplus to food-deficit regions abroad. There was a caution that discourses around rural development should not always be linked to agriculture although it is a key component in rural development. The seminar raised concern over programmes that are prescribed to rural areas without proper consultation with the resident communities. Some projects were said to be the reason for the reproduction of poverty as they led to dependency rather than sustainability. Most rural inhabitants are dependent on social grants for their livelihood.

One of the suggested approaches to transformation was to place the struggle against poverty and oppression at the heart of any development agenda. The continued socio-economic decline of the province over the past ten years is a regrettable indicator of the ineffectiveness of government interventions.

The new leadership in the province has a huge challenge on its desk but perhaps the support from the new rural development department will increase chances of success this time round.

The Transformer Jun-Jul 2009