Manuel on ropes over growth plan

The National Union of Metal Workers has launched a scathing attack on Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel's National Development Plan, saying it does not effectively tackle unemployment, poverty and inequalities.

Numsa said the plan was not in keeping with the policy positions adopted at the ANC's Polokwane conference in 2007, and that it was not based on the ruling party's Freedom Charter or on the Reconstruction and Development Programme - which advocates policies such as transforming patterns of ownership and control of the economy.

The comments about Manuel by the bosses of Numsa, one of the the biggest affiliates of trade union federation Cosatu, with 287000 members, is the third attack on the plan, which has already been panned by two cabinet ministers.

The plan, unveiled last month by the National Planning Commission chaired by Manuel, is a strategy meant to improve the economy within 20 years.

Briefing journalists after a meeting of the union's central committee, in Newtown, Johannesburg, yesterday, Numsa president Cedric Gina and general secretary Irvin Jim said Manuel's diagnostic report, released in June, correctly blamed South Africa's current economic problems on apartheid - including displacements and race-based economic exclusion - but that said the new report misses the plot when it cites the challenges bequeathed by apartheid instead of dealing with today's "triple crisis" - poverty, unemployment and inequality.

Gina said: "The diagnostic report puts everyone to sleep by mentioning all the good policies we have had. It also mentions the Cosatu document 'The Growth Path to Full Employment', but when it comes to the solution, it brings back all the recommendations by the Harvard Group, and those were rejected by the Polokwane conference."

"We think that, in a way, Manuel was part of the people who originally brought in the Harvard Group, and they are trying to bring the Harvard Group's recommendations back into the country, and we can't allow that," Gina said.

The Harvard Group was a panel of international economists who penned economic policy recommendations for the government when Manuel was finance minister - recommendations the ANC-led government did not consider.

Manuel's plan recommended, among other things, that the government consider performance-based pay for teachers, and that teachers and school principals be subjected to competency tests.

The plan aims to create 11million jobs by 2030.

It recommends that Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba be stripped of his power to appoint CEOs of government parastatals, saying that that should be left to parastatals' boards. The report says that the power to make appointments has been abused by the ANC.

Gigaba was quick to blast the plan, and reportedly said the National Planning Commission had overstepped its mandate by making such a call.

He was quoted as saying: "Even in the private sector, there is no board that appoints a CEO without at least consulting the major shareholder."

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga called Manuel's plan "unrealistic".

She said that when she was asked about the call for performance-based pay for teachers she replied: "Areas [in the plan] are not informed by reality. It's things you want in your ideal world. It's not done anywhere else. I'm not sure how they expect us to be able to do it."

The public has four months in which to comment on Manuel's ambitious plan before the cabinet approves it, which is likely to be in March or April.

Jim said that the Planning Commission must explain why the government has failed to do away with unemployment, poverty and inequality.

He said Numsa is putting together a detailed critique of Manuel's plan and will release its response to the recommendations in February.

"The Planning Commission's diagnostic report is highly inconsistent. It identifies nine challenges that it considers to be obstacles to addressing unemployment, poverty and inequalities.

"But it does not link these challenges to the underlying problematic economic relation[ships] that define South African society," he said.

Dumisa Jele, the commission's chief of staff, said: "When the plan was sent out, it was sent for public comment, for public participation; it was sent for reaction because we're not prescribing something that is refined, which will suit everybody."