South Africa’s latest official unemployment statistics reflect that 23,5% economically active South Africans, or 4,2-million people, are currently jobless. However, if that figure were to include those discouraged from actively seeking employment, known as the ‘broad’ definition of unemployment, the figure swells to an even more frightening 28,4%, or 5,3-million people.

Further, about 75% of unemployed people are under the age of 35, while 72% of the unemployed between the ages of 15 and 30 have never had a job, and have, thus, never acquired any kind of marketable skill.

But still the country faces a so-called ‘skills deficit’, indicating a material mismatch between the education and training outcomes and the needs of a fast modernising economy.

Essentially, a large contributor to this unemployment problem is that most of the gaps in the South African job market are not able to be filled, because those who are unemployed simply do not possess the appropriate, or any, set of skills that are in demand.

To close this gap, it is widely agreed that solutions are needed that enable vast numbers of people around the country to be trained, or retrained. The challenge is as acute for the private sector as it is for the lowest and highest tiers of government, with the aim being not only to furnish people with jobs, but also to enable the economy to grow through key infra- structure and other developments that cannot be effected without an appropriately skilled workforce.

President Jacob Zuma highlighted this point in his recent State of the Nation address, saying: “We have to ensure that training and skills development initiatives in the country respond to the requirements of the economy.” He added that “education will be a key priority for the next five years”.

These sentiments reflected an earlier announcement, made in August 2008, for plans to introduce a nationwide human resource development strategy in April 2009, called the Human Resource Development Strategy of South Africa (HRDS-SA). The HRDS-SA would see a broad-based focus on developing skills and training initiatives across all industries and at all levels in the country, while seeking to align the supply of labour with the demands of the labour market.

WHAT ABOUT JIPSA?

However, the HRDS-SA’s broad-based approach would be based on, and replace, a smaller, more focused programme.

The Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) was established by Cabinet in March 2006 to support the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa), which itself was established one month earlier by then Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and has its origins in an earlier commitment by government to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014.

Initially, Cabinet approved an 18-month plan for Jipsa, which was a joint public–private initiative aimed at identifying priority skills essential to the South African economy, while seeking ways to unite the public and private sectors in achieving the focused development of those priority skills.

At the end of Jipsa’s initial lifespan, following a join task team bosberaad (high-level meeting) in November 2007, the lifespan of Jipsa was extended for another 18 months.

Then, in August 2008, a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Employment and Investment again approved the extension of Jipsa to December 31, 2010.

Simultaneously, the committee decided that Jipsa would begin its evolution into the HRDS-SA, which would essentially be a much broader ‘reimagining’ of the work Jipsa was already doing, and would eventually replace Jipsa completely once the migration was complete.

However, it is not clear what the decision to end the public–private Jipsa and migrate its work across to the HRDS-SA would mean. Adding to the uncertainty was Zuma’s recent decision to split the former Department of Education (DoE) into two ministries: Basic Education, led by Minister Angie Motshekga, which essentially consists of the general schooling system; and the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), headed up by Dr Blade Nzimande.

In an exclusive interview, Nzimande confirmed to Engineering News that his new Ministry would incorporate the further education and training (FET) colleges, sector education and training authorities (Setas), universities and universities of technology in an effort to achieve synergy in the higher education sector. But precisely what Jipsa’s new role would be within the new context of the restructured DoE and the HRDS-SA would have to be “rethought”, Nzimande added.

This uncertainty has naturally raised a degree of anxiety within the private sector, which believes Jipsa has been a success.

“Does the short-term attempt to acquire priority skills just get lost in all of this, or do we keep that focus on priority skills?” asks Jipsa secretariat funder Business Trust CEO Brian Whittaker. “For a developing country like South Africa, the building and acquiring of skills needed to develop the economy are issue definitely not off the agenda.”

For his part, Nzimande is quick to placate such fears.

“We are concerned with scarce skills, and we will be prioritising artisan training, while strengthening the FET sector to play a much more important role in artisan and other scarce skills production.

“It is something that we are dealing with as a matter of priority as we build this new department. We will then be able to properly define the relationship between the HRDS-SA and the activities of Jipsa,” Nzimande tells Engineering News.

He explains that the focus of the HRDS-SA will be on integrating higher education and training structures, reducing the number of structures that operate outside the defined focus of what the skills development priorities are.

BUILDING ON SUCCESS?

Such an approach is likely to be welcomed within the private sector, but concerns linger.

Currently, the Jipsa secretariat is administered by the independent National Business Initiative (NBI), which has reportedly done well not only in aligning the interests of key private and public players, but also in tracking the programme’s successes and challenges.

NBI Jipsa secretariat head Makano Morojele tells Engineering News that the reason NBI was appointed as Jipsa secretariat was that a flexible, agile, fast-moving entity was needed to sidestep all the red tape and administer the programme in a partnership arrangement, owing to the urgency of the skills crisis.

“There is always the risk of a slump occurring during the changeover,” says Whittaker. “One does sense that, throughout government, there is a new sense of energy and drive. People in government seem to be energised by the changes taking place throughout. That might help to drive the programme forward on a much more consistent basis.”

Concerning the changeover, Morojele says that the NBI’s involvement will remain unchanged for now. “The secretariat is continuing the work that Jipsa initiated, but now under the broad banner of the HRDS-SA. The continuation of the programme has not been hindered in any way, and we will continue with the work until we are told otherwise.”

She says she has no reason to doubt that a smooth transition will take place, because the HRDS-SA is a continuation and expansion of the same type of thinking.

“I don’t foresee any clashes whatsoever. If anything, the fact that the Jipsa secretariat is still up and running and pushing the programme forward will ensure we have a singular transition into these new structures,” Morojele says, adding that the NBI remains ready to support the important imperative of priority skills acquisition and believes it is necessary to allow the new Cabinet Ministers some time to finalise institutional arrangements.

Despite the planned rethink, Nzimande is clear on his desire for a continued involvement by the private sector and institutions such as the NBI.

He says he plans to “ harness” private-sector resources. But he would not be drawn on what form this could take, adding only that it is something he will be interrogating.

“I do intend that some early engagement is made around the key players that have been involved up to now.

“Clearly, the NBI is very important because of the role that it played in the past,” Nzimande outlines.

Currently, the Jipsa Secretariat is compiling the final Jipsa handover report, which will be used as a comprehensive guide when migrating Jipsa’s work into the HRDS-SA.

He adds that the role of the private sector in the HRDS-SA is imperative.

“We can’t really talk about skills development without discussing the role of the private sector. We believe it has an important role to play although, unfortunately, the situation is rather uneven. Some companies have just not taken the issue of the [training] of apprentices seriously. We expect the private sector to play an even more prominent role in providing apprenticeships,” Nzimande says.

However, the future involvement of the Business Trust seems more clearly defined in that it has given the undertaking to fund the secretariat through the transition process, up to the end of 2010. Through that process, Whittaker says, the Business Trust would like to see a sharp focus on Jipsa’s priorities and a transfer of lessons learnt into the new arrangements.

“Our involvement in Jipsa was always a short-term involvement on a short-term programme. We run programmes that last between three and five years, which is our business model,” says Whittaker. “As such, we expect to complete what we have agreed to do, until the point of final transition, but no commitments have been made beyond the current support programme.”

In terms of funding the secretariat in future, Whittaker says that the level of funding required to run the administration of the programme is not large, and should not be a major feature on the DHET’s budget should the secretariat be government-funded in future and not private-sector-funded, although this has not yet been confirmed.

He says that the real importance of having had private-sector funding lies in the fact that it was more discretionary, and could be deployed a lot faster, which was necessary when Jipsa started. Whether this will change under the new structure remains to be seen.

“We will have to look at the Business Trust’s role in terms of the restructuring that is taking place,” says Nzimande.

He concludes that the DHET has given itself about four months to clearly define the scope and kinds of integration that will be taking place in order to effect the HRDS-SA in building an integrated higher education and training sector.