South African Vision 2025: Worth a shot

A critique of the Green paper on National Strategic Planning

The Green paper on “National Strategic Planning” released by the Minister in the Presidency: National Planning, is worth giving the proposals contained therein a shot and is an appropriate discussion document as the country seeks a way out of the morass of poverty and systemic inequality. An article was published in the Daily News entitled ‘Trapped in the pit of poverty’ (5th October 2009) by Hamilton Wende which brings home the lot of a majority of South Africans caught in the tentacles of inequality and poverty.

At its core, under the rubric of ‘South African Vision 2025’, it envisages a society in which, inter alia:

That vision includes a role for the private sector with investment opportunities promising competitive returns whilst promoting the common interest of the nation. Moreover, in such a society

‘able bodied citizens and all work seekers will have access to decent jobs’ , their rights as workers protected and with comprehensive security measures in place and individual and communities will work together informed by a value system of human respect and solidarity.

The over-arching instrument to flesh out that vision will be the National Planning Commission(NPC) comprised of respected intellectuals, leaders and independent experts and strategic thinkers in South Africa with the Minister as chairperson articulating the government’s objective. Otherwise the NPC will be ‘unencumbered by the constraints of government’ and will be required to produce a ‘draft long term over-arching plan for the country as a whole’. Parliament will be required to ‘develop mechanisms to oversee the planning processes and to ‘contribute to ensuring successful implementation of a national plan’. Furthermore parliament ‘will have an incisive role to play in interrogating and enriching the vision, and ensuring that it is embraced by broader society’.

Every five years there will a Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) presented which will produce in detail the envisaged outcomes and targets for priority functions. These outcomes and targets will be key inputs towards the realisation of the South Africa Vision 2025.

Those appointed by the President will be for a specific period so that fresh ideas and insights into the long term plan for South Africa and they will be expected to be critical advisors to government and to represent the long term aspirations of South Africans for a non-racial, non-sexist democratic and prosperous future for the country. They must have the voice for the future putting the interests of the long term development and progress at the centre of their recommendations. The NPC will play a critical role in mobilising the nation around the vision of the strategic plan.

In conclusion it is envisaged that the national plan will be developed by 2010.

The Preamble to the Constitution envisages ideals which, given the decades of an ideologically induced systemic inequality and dispossession, will take a long time to achieve. Sixteen years into our nascent constitutional democracy, there is a need for an integrated plan for the nation as a whole. Admittedly growth and development in South Africa has, as the document suggests, ‘been largely pedestrian’ with the existing structures being residues of the past century. If government is not to be accused of egregious lapses of its constitutional obligations, it is this writer’s opinion that the vision in the National Strategic Plan is worth a shot and that we in civil society give it our full attention and make input to the ambitious but realisable proposals enshrined therein. We need to mobilise and conscript our experts and strategic thinkers outside of government to participate by making inputs to the National Strategic Plan for it encourages civil society to participate as partners as opposed to spectators and critics of government whenever there is a blunder or failure on its part. It challenges us to evolve from finger pointers to lenders of hand and in the process to become active drivers of our constitutional enterprise.

Ours is a society where levels of poverty have degenerated to levels where human dignity, freedom and equality which constitute seamless and foundational values, have become seriously compromised. South Africa has become one of the most unequal societies in the world and government is alive to this aberration and therefore the National Strategic Plan is an opportunity to ameliorate what seriously ails our country.