The government and business partnership to resolve South Africa’s challenges is beginning to bear fruit, although much more needs to be done.
This is according to a statement released by the Presidency and Business for South Africa.
The partnership between the two parties was established last year in a bid to work together to resolve the question of inclusive and economic growth.
The collaboration has targeted three areas for particular interest, including energy, transport and logistics, and crime and corruption.
PHOTOS | President Ramaphosa meets with business leaders at the Union Buildings
Energy
In a joint statement following a meeting between government and business, which was led by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday, the Presidency and Business for South Africa noted that the energy workstream, in particular, has achieved significant progress.
“The energy workstream was reported to have had the most impact, achieving a dramatic reduction in load shedding, in collaboration with Eskom (over 140 days without load shedding so far this year), and significant grid capacity recovery (with more than 6 gigawatts of new energy generation added) through investment in additional technical support and capacitation from 57 companies investing over 9 000 hours at five power stations. The energy availability factor is currently tracking above 60% vs 54% in 2023.
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“However, we still face multiple challenges, including rapidly rising electricity costs, unsustainable municipal utilities, complex market reform, a constrained grid with delayed expansion, and stalling investment in new generation.
“Significant investment will be required for the energy sector reform over the next five to 10 years, and there was strong consensus that it is critical to pave the way now to address the challenges.
“Business, Eskom and the Presidency have agreed that the priorities of the National Energy Crisis Committee should include a focus on transmission, market reform, municipal utilities and new energy generation,” the statement read.
WATCH | Government, business meet with the President
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Transport and logistics
In the statement, the two parties acknowledged that although the two workstreams have recorded successes, this was not “as quickly or extensively as anticipated”.
“Business has provided significant technical support and resources to Transnet Freight Rail, including procurement and operations expertise, and port maintenance support for Transnet Port Terminals. The Transnet Board and management team are making progress in implementing the Transnet recovery plan.
“Despite the significant efforts by the partners, there is broad acknowledgment that Transnet requires substantial interventions to improve performance to meet the needs of its customers and the market demand necessary for sustainable economic growth,” the statement read.
READ | Transnet forging ahead with reforms
An agreement was reached to move quickly to implement reforms and meet Freight Logistics Roadmap deadlines.
“The meeting agreed that the rapid implementation of structural reforms and strict adherence to the Freight Logistics Roadmap deadlines are crucial to facilitate the participation of and investment by the private sector to help address our national logistics challenges.
“This is crucial to ensure that our commodities and manufactured products can be competitively sold into the local market and exported to meet demand. Resolving these issues will promote job retention and job creation,” the joint statement said.
Crime and corruption
Critical to South Africa’s growth and investment prospects is removal from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list.
When the FATF grey listed South Africa at its February 2023 Plenary meetings, it adopted a jointly agreed Action Plan containing 22 Action Items linked to the eight strategic deficiencies identified in the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and the Combating of the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime.
READ | SA continues work to exit grey list
The joint statement said the meeting agreed that an “immediate joint imperative” is to support South Africa’s removal from the list.
“Key to this is demonstrating the law enforcement agencies’ intent and ability to successfully prosecute complex crime and corruption cases, and recover assets. Business is providing specialised skills at arm’s length to support this objective.
“The promulgation of the NPA Amendment Act is key to bolstering the ability of the IDAC [Investigating Directorate Against Corruption] to effectively deliver on its mandate,” the statement said.
On job creation, the meeting acknowledged that growing the economy is imperative to facilitate employment opportunities.
“For now, unlocking a few key policy, regulatory and funding bottlenecks could accelerate existing short-term interventions across four areas, including new work opportunities in tourism and global business services; skilling that creates new jobs (particularly in digital skills); providing additional public sector first loss funding to crowd in private sector capital to increase affordable debt available for SMMEs, and institutionalising, expanding and strengthening the SAYouth platform to facilitate access to opportunities for young people,” the joint statement said. – SAnews.gov.za
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Sokol
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to have a good old go at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
dahlia bumble
Thanks for this article – it has opened my eyes to the possibilities in my life.