Radebe: academia must embrace the ideals of the NDP
1 October 2015
The principles of the National Development Plan (NDP), which South African
society must strive to fulfil by 2030, were unpacked yesterday by Minister Jeff
Radebe, the minister in the Presidency responsible for government planning,
monitoring and evaluation.
Radebe, also the chairperson of the National Planning Commission, was
speaking at a public lecture held at the University of South Africa (Unisa), in
Pretoria on 30 September.
The NDP, the minister said, identified the critical challenges of unemployment,
poverty and inequality that needed to be addressed. It also outlined the actions and
measures that needed to be taken in order to achieve the vision.
It outlined the physical, human and institutional capabilities necessary to
ensure socio-economic transformation, Radebe added, saying it highlighted 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," he explained.
Reiterating the minister's remarks after his presentation, human rights lawyer
Tseliso Thipanyane, who is the chief executive officer of the Safer South Africa
Foundation, said the minister's message about the NDP not being a government plan
but a national plan that needed all sectors of society to participate in
implementation, was an important one. It was a message that academics and their
institutions, such as Unisa, had an important role to play in making the plan a
success.
"Academics," Thipanyane said, "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."
South Africa could no longer have many young people with university
qualifications which are not being used to contribute to the socio-economic
development of the country.
During his lecture, Radebe expanded on the NDP's encouragement of good
governance, as part of the non-physical infrastructure that needed to be developed
to support socio-economic change. He explained that "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 about how much weight to give to international developments that
affected our development, as well as the type of relations to have with other
nations were functions of good governance. Communicating these decisions to
citizens was also a function of government, which must be done in good faith for
the good of the South African
people, Radebe concluded.
Source: SANews.gov
