Pretoria – Minister in the Presidency responsible for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Jeff Radebe, says the National Development Plan (NDP) emphasises the need for a new model of cooperation between the various sectors of society.
Minister Radebe was addressing a public lecture at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Pretoria on Wednesday.
The Minister said the NDP paints a picture of a country South Africans want to live in by 2030, and it identifies the critical challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality that need to be addressed. It also outlines the actions and measures that need to be taken in order to achieve the vision.
He said the NDP outlines the physical, human and institutional capabilities necessary to ensure socio-economic transformation, and it highlights the importance of clarifying roles and responsibilities of different actors in government and society, to ensure effective implementation.
“In this sense the NDP is not the plan of government or the ruling party, but a plan for South Africa that is inclusive of all sections of society in which the state has a specific role relative to the roles of others.”
Speaking to SAnews after the lecture, Human Rights Lawyer and Chief Executive Officer for Safer South Africa Foundation, Advocate Tseliso Thipanyane, reiterated the Minister’s message that the NDP is not a government plan but a national plan that needs all sectors of society to participate in implementation.
“For it to work and turn our country into the country that we fought for, universities also need to play a role,” he said.
He said the lecture raised awareness to academics about the objectives of the NDP, and what the nation should be developed into by 2030.
“Academics … play a major role in producing future leaders of this country. Therefore, as they educate our young people they should bear in mind what the vision of this country is, and this lecture gave them a content of what they should be teaching,” he said.
Thipanyane said it can no longer be that South Africa has a lot of young people with university qualifications that has minimal impact on socio-economic development of the country.
NDP encourages good governance
The Minister further said the NDP encourages good governance as part of the non-physical infrastructure that must be developed to support socio-economic change.
He said good governance is part of infrastructure necessary to take South Africa to its 2030 goals as outlined in Vision 2030.
“The decisions about how to spend public resources, what to prioritise in the face of competing demands, the sequence in which to implement priorities is a function of governance.
“The decision on how much weight to give to international developments that impact on our development, and the type of relations to have with other nations is a function of governance,” said the Minister, who is also a Chairperson of the National Planning Commission.
He said the communication of these decisions to citizens is a function of governance, which can be done well or badly. - SAnews.gov.za
