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JEREMY MAGGS: Let’s start with jobs and employment, particularly among young South Africans, and there’s been a mixture of cynicism and praise. But the Gauteng Premier [Panyaza Lesufi] is sticking to his lane, saying there’s nothing particularly special about his big jobs initiative and goes on to say those who feel he is using it as a pre-election gimmick are misinformed.
With more details now, as we’re joined by the premier of the Gauteng province, Premier Panyaza Lesufi, a very warm welcome to you. First of all, are you disappointed with the criticism that has been levelled against you, saying that this move of yours is politically expedient?
PANYAZA LESUFI: Thank you so much, Jeremy, for the opportunity. Not really; you can see the criticism is not coming from the people who need jobs. The criticism does not come from people who need this opportunity desperately. It comes from those who have a comfortable life and those who are easy to criticise without placing an alternative solution on the table.
When we came in, and most people forget that that when we came in almost eight, nine months ago, we indicated our commitment to restart the economy of Gauteng and ensure that government leads in creating jobs because everyone complains about unemployment.
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The figures are staggering. We just advertised last month, 8 000 jobs, and we got 1.4 million applications. So there’s an indication that we need to move with speed to ensure that we create opportunities for our people.
JEREMY MAGGS: You will agree that the timing for you is useful ahead of next year’s election. Survey after survey, including one by the ANC itself, confirming that support for your party could dip below 50% for the first time since 1994. And simply, you’re throwing money at a problem in the hope of saving the province.
PANYAZA LESUFI: Not necessarily; 2016, that’s when the party started to lose a tangible number of votes and people didn’t say anything. So it’s not something that is new that the party’s going through difficulties, those difficulties have been acknowledged, but we’re running government.
So I must stop giving bread to people who are in hospital because I’ll be accused of electioneering. I must stop giving people medication at hospitals because I’ll be accused of electioneering, because the biggest expenditure that I have in provincial government is medication, which is almost close to R8 billion in a year, and the job creation initiative is not even close to that.
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We took a decision, Jeremy, that there are three areas where we’re going to spend our time, it’s job creation or attracting jobs and making our conditions conducive for private sector to come in. I’m quite excited that last month alone, because we attracted three big firms that are going to create not less than 5 000 jobs in Gauteng.
The second area we said we’ll fight crime, we’ve [planted] to date almost R2.7 million in hiring young people to fight crime, and also to ensure that we get the necessary equipment. If you take these crime stats about Gauteng and you’re not staying in South Africa, you’re staying outside South Africa, and you want to come and invest in our province, you’ll be scared to come and invest here with the high level of crime. So we are [investing] money to ensure that our province is safe and ensure that the police are appropriately equipped with the latest form of technology in fighting crime.
The third area where we said we’ll spend time on is ending load shedding.
We are the economic hub of the country, if this province collapses in terms of energy shortage, we’re going to have serious, serious challenges.
The banks are here, the ICT [information and communication technology] companies are here, motor vehicle companies are here. So we have to protect the energy system of our province.
JEREMY MAGGS: In terms of the job initiative, let’s assume that C-suite executives are listening to our conversation, I sincerely hope that they are. What is your call to the private sector? What more involvement do you want from them, given that there does remain a level of deep scepticism about this initiative?
PANYAZA LESUFI: …the number of young people that we have now, 1.5 million to be precise, remain unemployed. This economy is not going to prosper if you’ve got this number of young people. That is why we have social ills; we have challenges of crime. So we’ve got the database of 1.4 million young people who are highly qualified. Others are chartered accountants, others are lawyers, others are engineers on that database.
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So we just have to recalibrate the economy and convene them and ensure that they use the database also for recruitment so that we can push the economy for our province, by extension the economy for our country.
JEREMY MAGGS: In terms of the people who have been placed, are you absolutely confident they’re fully qualified for the jobs that they’ve been put into?
PANYAZA LESUFI: More than qualified. We’ve got three categories of jobs. We’ve got what we call a vacant and funded post, we’ve got 13 000 vacant and funded posts, which are posts that are there, which are budgeted for, but unfortunately, they were not filled. Of the 13 000, we only advertised 8 000 so that we can manage other things, attrition, resignations and other related matters.
We also have posts that are skills related. What we’ve done, we said there are three challenges that are facing us in Gauteng. One obviously is energy; we’ve got the advantage of solar energy in our province.
So what we did, we advertised 25 000 posts for young people who can be trained to install solar, so that they can be solar technicians. We got funding from MerSETA, which is a training institution of government.
They’re giving them a R7 000 stipend while they’re still training and when they qualify, we’ll then appoint them to put solar panels in government buildings and [for] those who can’t afford solar panels in a township. So that’s resolving a challenge.
The second one is the one that is resolving potholes. We’ve got long grass in our freeway, lots of potholes, literally everywhere. So we’ve gone to the market to look for 6 000 people. We got funding for that as well from the Expanded Public Works Programme [EPWP]. So for 24 months these young fellows would be in a position to get almost R4 000 run per month.
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The third, which to us is very, very important, we are of the view that internet connectivity is the future, especially in the townships where people can’t afford data and other things. So we’ve given three top companies that are installing broadband connectivity in our townships. We asked them, they must match. We can’t give you this money and you don’t create jobs, and they gave us 12 000 jobs just for young people who will be in a position to connect houses through internet. So those 12 000 posts are going live later this month.
We also are looking for 6 000 people who will then move us from paper to digital, because we’ve got lots of paper in our offices, and we’ve positioned ourselves as a digital economy. We also got funding for that. So in the month of September the 6 000 data capturers will go live as well.
So we’ve got 6 000 posts literally every month until the end of July 2024.
JEREMY MAGGS: One of the allegations that’s been levelled against the Gauteng government is that money being used for this project from your coffers is simply being rechannelled from other projects and that they have been deprioritised. Is that true?
PANYAZA LESUFI: That’s not true. Let’s take the MerSETA one, the 25 000 posts that we’ve just advertised. We went with them, they underspent, I analysed their financial statements. I found that they were underspending hopelessly. So we went with them. We gave them a proposal of R140 million, and they went to a board meeting and gave us R140 million.
Does it come from the coffers of provincial government, no. Where does it come from? It comes from another institution of government that was not utilising that budget. We went to Treasury, we found that we’ve got 8 000 funded posts that were vacant. So that’s the money that was there but not used. So we went and advertised those posts and those posts will be filled.
So any other person who is accusing us of throwing money [away] and being reckless, I think they don’t know our systems.
I said to the MEC of Finance [Jacob Mamabolo] and the HOD responsible for finance [Ncumisa Mnyani], you have to keep your eye on that log. We don’t want to overspend, but most importantly, don’t want to underspend. So there are systems in place to ensure that the money that we’re using for these job programmes is the money that we have and that we don’t have to plunge the province into a serious financial crisis.
JEREMY MAGGS: Premier, there are two other issues while I’ve got you on the line, that I do want your view on. The first one is why don’t we know the cause yet of the gas leak in central Johannesburg?
PANYAZA LESUFI: Because it’s a difficult thing to establish and it’s not something that can be established overnight, and we can’t just guess and pre-empt…
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JEREMY MAGGS: I understand that, but how long is this investigation going to take?
PANYAZA LESUFI: Well, those who are experts are telling us that it’s imminent. At least they found that it’s gas related, but we don’t know from which channel. We brought all the gas institutions, Egoli Gas, Sasol, and we also brought those that are working with sewer systems underground.
So I’m quite convinced they will find, because we want to find the cause so that we can resolve and repair the road. It’s a business road in the middle of our CBD but we’re quite convinced that the experts that we have appointed will give us an idea of what caused the explosion.
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JEREMY MAGGS: But it’s debilitating and I’m glad you used the word business because part of your problem is convincing investors and business leaders that Gauteng is still a viable investment destination when you see collapsing infrastructure like this.
PANYAZA LESUFI: It remains a viable one, check the last quarter statistics of Stats SA [Statistics South Africa], we are the only province that created 80 000 jobs, far, far ahead of any other province. We’ve attracted, as I said, last month alone with three top companies that have agreed to migrate to Gauteng and open their offices.
We’re working extremely hard with the Chinese government to roll out electric vehicles. Three of their companies are willing to come to Gauteng to roll out electric vehicles. So we remain attractive to those that want to invest in South Africa. They first prefer us, but obviously, as I said, the crime stats scare them. So we need to do everything within our powers to push back crime in our province.
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JEREMY MAGGS: Well, talking of that, do you have an intervention plan regarding the zama zama mining crisis in Riverlea just outside Soweto?
PANYAZA LESUFI: I’m frustrated, Jeremy, because to be quite frank, actually I’m falling short to say I’m very angry. We’ve presented what we think was the best solution to those who are dealing with law enforcement in our country, and we really believe that they don’t understand the severity of the problem. We don’t need people to patrol there. We don’t need people to negotiate. We just need a combination of all the law enforcement agencies and go down there, flush out those people, let the last man stand, so that we can be in a position to close down those mines and reuse them either for housing, sporting facilities and community facilities.
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We can’t allow this kind of situation to even extend within a week. We just have to bring the fire power that we have as a country and go there and flush these people out. It does not need any form of negotiation, any form of rehabilitation. These are terrorists, well armed, terrorising our communities, and I think as a country we should respond with the necessary power. To visit and talk to communities will not resolve the situation. We need all the law enforcement agencies’ firepower and capabilities and the skills that we have to go there and flush out these people.
JEREMY MAGGS: Premier Panyaza Lesufi, thank you very much.
