Multi-Party Charter Unveils Plan to Reduce Unemployment and Poverty

In the face of South Africa’s bleak economic outlook marked by 41% unemployment, a constrained business environment and decreased investor confidence, The Multi-Party Charter for South Africa has unveiled our plan to arrest this decline by stabilising public finances, generating inclusive economic growth, and enhancing the quality of our education system. Our approach to generating job-creating economic growth is rooted in our principles, on which there is broad consensus amongst the parties represented in The Charter.

The ANC’s mismanagement of our economy has created an unproductive and uncompetitive economic environment, perfectly illustrated by Durban Harbour, the backdrop to this press conference. Durban Harbour should be a place of busting economic activity, the gateway for South Africa’s export products, but instead it is a major bottleneck throttling our economy, along with our broken railways and education system.

The ANC’s mismanagement of our economy is not only reflected in our unemployment rate, which stands at 41.2% but also in the pains that South African households experience against the ever- rising cost of living. With these urgent issues in mind, the The Multi-Party Charter, representing the biggest alternative political bloc to the ANC by far, has come together to present a new economic direction for South Africa.
All parties in The Charter are committed to these shared ideas and to working together in a new national governing coalition to grow South Africa’s economy and create jobs. Presenting The Charter’s commitment to achieving our objectives of reducing unemployment and poverty, our plan adopts a two-pronged approach which focuses on fostering the creation of conditions conducive to economic growth while simultaneously growing the skills base of our workforce.

These shared principles are as follows:

• Driven by the necessity to position South Africa as a competitive market for innovation and investment, the Charter will unlock the full potential of investment by removing barriers and eliminating overly prohibitive limitations. We will therefore defend property rights and introduce additional legislative measures to protect land, capital, and intellectual property rights.
• Furthermore, the Charter will seek to create competitive local manufacturing and productive capacity. To help South African businesses to become more competitive, we will reduce fuel prices by specifically targeting the general fuel levy, reforming fuel taxes, and deregulating the sector.
• To ensure value for money in government expenditure on economic infrastructure, we will further enhance the efficiency and transparency of fiscal management. We will establish fiscal discipline on government borrowing by capping the debt-to-GDP ratio annually through implementing a “fiscal rule.” Crucially, we will ensure the independence of the South African Reserve Bank.
• Critical to our plan is the need to unleash the full potential of the SMME sector by tapping into the informal sector and introducing a broad range of regulatory exemptions for SMMEs within their first three years of operation to improve the SMME survival rate. To further support the sector, we will raise SMME’s VAT threshold to R5 million turnover and exempt small businesses from all labour legislation other than the BCEA.
• To strengthen South Africa’s workforce capacity and skills to respond to our current and future economic needs, the Multi-Party Charter will grow the skills base of the workforce through visa system reforms to allow scarce skills to enter South Africa to replace skills lost locally to emigration, recognise apprenticeships by reintroducing technical colleges and gazette Trade Test Training that the TVET sector will perform.
• Importantly, the Charter recognises that we must future-proof our workforce by aligning skills development mechanisms with current and future economic needs and enhancing the competitiveness and productivity of our labour force.
• To equip every South African with a quality education that can address societal inequalities, enable active participation in the economy, and increase productivity, the Multi-Party Charter will improve the quality of education by addressing the education crisis through the depoliticisation of the education system, enhancing curriculum delivery, and reintroducing fit- for-purpose performance management systems.
• Through partnerships with universities, we will improve teacher quality and further this effort by reintroducing teacher training colleges, implementing performance-linked remuneration, and establishing a Schools Inspectorate to ensure the delivery of quality education.
• The Multi-Party Charter commits to ensuring that no child is left behind by proactively identifying at-risk learners for additional support, capacitating our public education system with in-house counsellors and educational psychologists, and guaranteeing that every child has the means of transportation to get to school.

This approach represents the principles on which there is broad consensus among the parties within The Charter with respect to South Africa’s economic outlook and what needs to be done to address it. Beyond these shared principles, each individual Party has a number of unique policies which they will present to the electorate throughout the campaign for the 2024 elections. Voters are encouraged to consider what each Party offers in making their choice for 2024, confident that there is agreement on the fundamental governing principles and approach.

Today is the first time in South Africa that a group of opposition parties representing the biggest voting bloc outside of the ANC in South African history, come together to present a shared agenda to grow our economy and create jobs. In the 2024 general election, voters now have a clear choice between The Charter’s job-creating approach and the ANC’s job-killing approach to the economy.