Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan offered a spirited defence of the National Development Plan (NDP) on Thursday, amid sustained attacks on the document by some labour leaders within the governing African National Congress- (ANC-) led alliance.

The document, which was released on the day before the dramatic shooting of miners by police near the Marikana platinum mine in August, was endorsed by Cabinet last year and adopted at the ANC's elective conference in Mangaung, in December.

However, it had since come under attack from some labour leaders, notably the National Union of Metalworkers general-secretary Irvin Jim, who has dismissed it as an attempt to appease business at the cost of workers.

Addressing staff and students at the University of Johannesburg, Gordhan said the NDP provided a "framework, direction and perspective that we can work with".

In a subsequent media briefing he argued that there was more consensus than dissent on the contents of the NDP.

He added that it offered a chance for a "unique deal" in turning the country's economic fortunes around, much as the country's negotiated settlement had provided a unique locally formulated platform for the transition from apartheid to democracy 19 years ago.

To forge such a deal, required more than political will. It also required a willingness on the part of government, business and labour to cooperate and compromise.

The social partners should, therefore, not focus on the "narrow points of difference", but seek consensus on those where "we can act together ... to get things done", in a context where the country's growth trajectory was inadequate to deal with its problems of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

Gordan said the 2013 Budget had offered the first opportunity to begin aligning the NDP with departmental planning processes and programmes, but that greater coherence could be expected in the upcoming Medium-Term Strategic Framework and in the 2014 Budget.  

However, he also used the platform to attack what he saw as a growing conservatism in South Africa's economic analysis and commentary, which promoted remedies that he described as being counter to the objectives of promoting greater economic inclusiveness.

Referring to lessons drawn from his recent participation in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, in Washington DC, he argued that there was a growing realisation that some of the orthodoxy surrounding fiscal policy had materially undermined the economic recovery.

That said, there were also fears of serious unintended consequences over the eventual unwinding of unconventional monetary policy actions that had been taken to ward off the crisis, such as long-duration quantitative easing.

What had emerged strongly, in Gordhan's view, was the need to shift the focus decisively from austerity to growth and to find ways to address rising inequality and unemployment, especially youth unemployment.

This stance, Gordhan argued, "vindicated" South Africa's counter-cyclical fiscal policies that had been pursued since 2009, and which would continue, notwithstanding a commitment to budgetary consolidation over the medium term.

The priority now, though, was for the domestic private sector to partner with government on strategies that would "ignite growth" in the short term and lift economic expansion well beyond the 2.7% being projected for 2013.

Part of the growth remedy lay in South African private sector investing its cash surpluses in projects that sought to benefit from high levels of growth in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

He called on South African firms to show "courage and enterprise" in pursuing the new opportunities opening up across the continent.