Manuel laments high jobless, poverty rates

Cape Town - There are too few South Africans employed and the quality of education for most black people remains poor, said National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel on Thursday.

At a media briefing ahead of delivering his budget vote speech in parliament, Manuel introduced his National Planning Commission's first report entitled Diagnostic Overview.

In its introduction the report admits: "The economy has failed to create jobs at the pace necessary to reduce extremely high unemployment, and the education system has failed to ensure that equalised public spending on schooling translates into improved education for poor black people."

South Africa's education budget rose by 9.7% to R189.5bn for the 2011/12 fiscal year, with the basic education allocation going up by 10.6% to R145.5bn and tertiary education by 6.8% to R26bn.

The unemployment rate was at 25% for the first quarter of this year, according to Statistics South Africa.

The planning commission has a budget this year of R63bn and an expected lifespan of five years. All the commissioners are part-time.

Seven  major challenges are presented in the Diagnostic Overview. These are: poor infrastructure; spatial challenges that marginalise the poor; the dependence of South Africa's growth path on resources; the ailing public healthcare system; corruption; and that South Africa remained a divided society.

The commission plans to hold a round of consultative workshops with various sectors of society, business, labour and the government to determine what values the country should have, Manuel said.

This, Manuel said, would include the use of social media such as Twitter and FaceBook.

A major focus of the commission would be on the formation of South Africa as a development state, but the commissioners said that they had not yet defined this term due to its wide usage in various sectors.

Manuel said that since the commission's establishment it had held 36 meetings, of which 10 had been plenaries. It had also collected or generated 254 reports, of which 150 would become available on its website once it is operational.