Delegates at the ANC’s sixth national policy conference and members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) have deliberated and made recommendations on the country’s transition from coal to clean energy sources; the future of state-owned enterprises, unemployment, and Eskom.
In a media briefing on the sidelines of the national conference at Nasrec South of Johannesburg, they made appeals to declare youth unemployment a national disaster. This comes as unemployment among young people surpassed 60%.
Chairperson of the Economic Transformation Commission, Mmamoloko Kubayi says progress reports were given on resolutions dating back to 2017. Kubayi says, however, that delegates have expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of implementation of resolutions.
“There was a common theme around concerns of unemployment, especially for youth unemployment, and mainly even some calls to declare it a national crisis. But we can’t continue like this. We have to be able to put mechanisms in place to be able to respond to youth unemployment,” Kubai said.
Kubayi says delegates have proposed that the just transition from coal should be done at the pace and scale that the country can afford.
“We reaffirm the work that has been done by the climate change commission where they released a just transition framework because when you look at it, it talks about inclusivity in the just transition. So, in the pace that we do not have a mass loss of jobs, we do not have a shutdown of the economy, we do not have an unreliable energy supply,” says Kubayi.
Terence Creamer of the ANC’s Economic Transformation Commission says there was widespread support for the latest interventions by President Cyril Ramaphosa to seek alternative sources of electricity supply and to support Eskom’s maintenance programme.
He says cutting red tape will allow for greater investment in electricity capacity.
Suggestions have been made to align some SOEs which are seen as duplicates.
The ANC Economic Transformation Commission has further proposed that state-owned enterprises that do not have a strategic role should contribute to the developmental mandate.
