Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN: Chairperson the matter of youth development is one of the areas that the government thought would be one that it should focus on, find a way of attending to and find a way of measuring youth development, to be able to say are we making progress in terms of addressing these matters that you have raised. The government therefore decided, one of the things that needs to happen is that we need to have an institution within government which deals specifically with the youth. There was a lot of agitation among the youth who wanted to establish a ministry of youth affairs and we said no to that and said that rather we should get the President to be the Minister of youth affairs, it's better because in that way you can intervene in all structures of government with regard to this matter. If you had a minister of youth affairs, one minister is equal to another minister and may not be able to say, what are you doing in defence with regard to this matter of youth development. So you do indeed therefore have a unit or we are in the process of establishing one, a unit in the presidency, so that we can deal with this matter of youth development throughout government.
Now there are many things that need to be done in this regard. The matter of job creation is one of them. I'm mentioning this really merely as an example. You might remember that in this budget this year, when the Minister of Finance presented the budget he spoke among other things of a sum of R300 million, I'm giving this purely as an example, a sum of R300 million which he said would be used for purposes of upliftment of the women and the youth. That's supposed to be targeted in an exceptional way in those sorts of areas, there's other things that are happening in government with regard to youth development, but that's an example of the sort of focus that we're trying to pay, create this space to be able to deal with this matter.
Joe Modise as Minister of Defence has established a National Service Corps, and the idea was we do two things. When we demobilise soldiers to give them different skills so that when they get into the community they don't run this problem of also sinking into crime because they become unemployable. We extended that to say it must not only deal with soldiers but also deal with the unemployed youth, to bring as much of that youth in to train them, to reintroduce them, those who are outside of such a system, to reintroduce them to some kind of disciplined life, to give them some skills so that indeed they can then enter the normal labour market.
So financial constraints all of that, but that national service corps has started working with regard to the training, so there will be various elements like this from the Government side which would aim at finding the quickest possible ways to absorb the greatest possible numbers of these young people in useful work.
You will have seen that the Minister of Labour has published a green paper on this whole question of training. We've been looking at the training processes and facilities that fall under the Minister of Labour, to say are they relevant to these economic challenges that we face, but also what is their capacity to absorb this kind of person in our society that we are talking about. So as you know there's some discussion that is going on about this now, publicly after the publication of that green paper.
Again one of the areas of focus is this one.
You will also see that there've been changes, various matters announced by the Minister of Education. If you take Curriculum 2005 and what needs to be done with that why how you change the approach to education and achievement. Again in part is to open the sort of space so that you are able to absorb into the education system greater numbers of people.
The South African Qualifications Authority was established in order also to deal with this question, to create a space for the greatest possible mobility of people within the kind of trained cadre in the country, so that you can then get this young person, who is out in the streets, take him to a trade school, or take them to the National Service Corp, graduate them into a trade school but so that get the qualifications so that they are integrated with other qualifications in the country. So that you may indeed come via that process in the end end up in a technikon.
I am saying, Chairperson, there's a whole variety of measures, educational and so on, from the point of view of the State which aimed to address this matter. Now what should happen is that then from the Presidency, I'm talking now about the State system, from the Presidency would then be able to watch the entirety of government, including the provinces, to say what indeed are they doing with regard to this matter of youth development.
Of course critically important, Chairperson, in this respect is what happens with regard to the general question of creation of jobs as a result of growth in the economy in the private sector to create the sorts of jobs that would help us to reduce these levels of unemployment, and as I was saying, from the government side there's an important need to help to train these people so that indeed as the economy grows and begins to look for such people you have people who have got some skill to do whatever work. 
There is work going on, as I am saying that to see we do, at least we are supposed to, publish an annual - it's called a Poverty Study, it's more than a Poverty Study, it would then be able to say at the end of the year what progress have we made in a measurable way. What progress have we made in terms of that youth development? What progress have we made with regard to the reduction of poverty among children, all of that. So we are coming at it, the problem, in the same way that your Commissioners, Chairperson, are indicating the serious concern about youth, quite correctly.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes. Thank you. Hanif.

MR VALLY: Thank you Archbishop. We want to move on from SDU's now and raise the issue of violence in the then homelands. I want to apologise regarding specific questions because we didn't have these questions in our initial submission although in broad terms the area was covered.
We note that in the submission to us, both the list of MK operations and in the list of operations in which you say you are uncertain who was responsible, certain incidences in the Ciskei are not mentioned. We have had a number of applications, both regarding human rights violations and regarding amnesty, regarding conflict in the Ciskei. Just to briefly quote from the Network of Independent Monitors in a report entitled "Violence in the Ciskei 1992, 1993", it states
"During 1992 evidence of stepped-up MK activity in Ciskei mounted. The ANC conceded there were armed MK soldiers in Ciskei but denied they were involved in an unprecedented assault".
We have then a whole list of incidents that happened in the Ciskei, and although it's certainly not clear that these were all MK operations, but we are talking about 48 handgrenade attacks, 23 AK47 attacks, limpet mine incidents with regard to headmen and ADM members, Ciskei police officers etc.
Our question is that to what extent, and I want to make it clear we are not talking about the Bisho Massacre here, we've had a separate hearing about that, to what extent was there organised MK activity, again Brigadier Gqozo's rule, which may or may not have been launched from the Transkei, and against structures within the Ciskei, we are including the ADM and the headmen? That's my question.