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President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the official Freedom Day speech in Bloemfontein on Friday morning.
Ramamphosa’s celebratory speech touched on a number of issues, among them the minimum wage and land redistribution, which have hogged the headlines recently.
However, those issues were talked about towards the end of his address, with the beginning focusing more on why South Africa should always be proud of April 27 and that Freedom Day should be used as a day to reaffirm the continued fight for equity and equality.
“As we celebrate the freedoms that we have achieved and the great advances we have made, we need to use this Freedom Day to affirm our determination to intensify our struggle for socioeconomic freedom for all our people.”
Somehow this line did not sit well with the national flag behind the president, which fell and was subsequently raised.
Minimum wage is not a living wage, but a start
After lauding the finalisation of a national minimum wage as a victory for the workers of the country, Ramaphosa did acknowledge that it is not a living wage and that it will not end income inequality.
“But what the national minimum wage does provide is a firm and unassailable foundation, which is agreed to by all social partners, from which to advance the struggle for a living wage... We must remember that the introduction of the national minimum wage will increase the income of over 6.6 million working South Africans.”
He called on South Africans to celebrate this minimum wage, but at the same time to continue fighting for a more equitable income distribution.
“We must celebrate this as a foundation. As a foundation that will enable working people of our country [to] go on and fight for a living wage.”
He also called on the trade unions to be at the forefront of the fight for a living wage.
The land must be redistributed now
Ramaphosa dedicated just over six minutes of his hour-long speech to the issue of land, while only mentioning “expropriation without compensation” once.
“Among the measures we will use to accelerate redistribution is that of expropriation without compensation,” he said.
Ramaphosa, however, did reiterate numerous times that the land must be shared by all.
“Economic freedom, fellow South Africans, means that the land that was taken away from black South Africans also needs to be returned.”
He said those who own the land did not even consider sharing it with the people who worked it, and it is for this reason that the land needs to be returned.
Evoking the message of the Freedom Charter, Ramaphosa said that “land is an important economic resource. Its energy, its economic value and its social power must be unlocked and put to good use in the hands of all our people.”
The president said the majority of South Africans are locked out of the benefits from land that is owned by the government, state-owned enterprises [SOEs], companies and even individuals.
“The redistribution of land... Its time has come, it cannot be avoided.”
He made sure to include both urban and rural land in his definition of redistribution. Ramaphosa also promised that the government will do everything in its power to support those who get the land back.
“We earned our political rights and our democratic rights together, collectively. So we must all be given an opportunity to participate in the economic rights that are due to us as South Africans.”
Ambitious investment and putting out the fires of corruption
Ramaphosa also outlined what he called an “ambitious new investment drive” to attract local and international investors.
“In preparation for an investment conference later in the year, we are sending out four special envoys to meet with potential investors in major centres across the world.”
Ramaphosa said that South Africa’s SOEs were also being scrutinised, saying: “we are putting them right. We are appointing the right people, appointing the right board of directors [and] straightening out their business plans. We want to ensure that our SOEs serve the interests of our people as a whole, not the interests of just a few. This, we are determined to do because those enterprises are owned by the people of our country, and on this Freedom Day we want to free our SOEs from corruption”.
More power to black economic empowerment
Investment and combating corruption are not the only factors that will help stabilise the economy.
Ramaphosa said the county’s manufacturing capacity will be increased through industrial incentives, special economic zones and local procurement requirements.
“We do this so that we can increase the industrial capacity of our country, so that we can improve jobs. We are focusing on localisation of production of goods and services.
“The state is serious about supporting emerging black business. Those are the businesses the state wants to support.
“In support of this, we are working to deracialise our economy by strengthening our broad-based black economic empowerment policies, investing in black industrialists, opening up markets for new black entrants through more effective competition policies, and using the buying power of the state to support black business,” he said.
Ramaphosa also paid tribute to the late Albertina Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, calling on South Africans to be inspired by their legacy and to continue the fight for a just and equitable South Africa.
