Outgoing MEC shows gratitude to media houses and Gauteng citizens
I oversaw a department that led the accelerated social transformation pillar and as such, we were guided by a vision to build a caring and self-reliant society that cares for vulnerable groups.
As outgoing MEC for Gauteng Social Development, I would like to thank members of the media for the unwavering support over the last 10 years in the Gauteng Government Office.
Media has been one of the key partners in conveying government messages to the people. It has kept the Gauteng Department of Social Development on its toes in ensuring society is served accordingly and we remain accountable. We, therefore, thank you for the interesting partnership we had in communicating the work of the Gauteng Provincial Government on social development programmes to South African citizens during the fifth administration of the ANC-led government.
I’m humbled and grateful to have been deployed by the ANC to be part of a leadership collective that drove the Ten Pillar Programme of transformation, modernisation and re-industrialisation in our quest to improve the lives of Gauteng citizens.
I oversaw a department that led the accelerated social transformation pillar and as such, we were guided by a vision to build a caring and self-reliant society that cares for vulnerable groups. These include older people, people with a disability, orphaned and neglected children, youth who abuse drugs and alcohol, abused women and children, as well as men and women who experience poverty due to unemployment.
Among many programmes we implemented working together with the private sector, communities, non-profit and faith-based organisations, we contributed greatly to improve education through early childhood development (ECD) programmes for children zero to four years old, hence increasing universal access through building ECD centres.
The main challenge of this work, however, is to ensure all ECD centres comply with Children’s Act 36 of 2005, for proper care, support, protection and education of children so they can be financially supported. We thank media for helping us raise this matter.
Together we fought against alcohol and substance abuse, especially among unemployed young people. We created awareness, especially through our television partnership with Soul City, on reducing harm and demand for drugs. The ongoing challenge is for law enforcement agencies to arrest and convict drug lords to reduce the supply of drugs and for the Gauteng social movement against drugs to strengthen partnerships in combating drug and alcohol abuse.
We raised awareness of gender-based violence and human trafficking. You were there when we supported many families of young women who were murdered by their loved ones and when we saved children who were trafficked from other countries and provinces under the pretext of a better life in Gauteng. We thank you for covering our partnership with Edcon on economic empowerment of abused women from our shelters as these women are now designing clothes bought by Edgars. The main challenge is for civil society and media to strengthen the campaign so perpetrators of gender-based violence rot in jail.
We thank media for reporting on various programmes on economic empowerment of unemployed youth, men and women through skills development, employment opportunities and entrepreneurship among a number of sustainable livelihoods programmes. These include Tshepo One Million which brought hope to millions of unemployed youth and our Welfare to Work programme which promoted self-reliance mostly among women who depend on social grants to raise their children as single mothers.
We would, however, have appreciated media to report on our township economic revitalisation programmes which economically empowered co-operatives and other township enterprises who provided goods and services to government. The challenge is for the department to expedite procurement processes for these township businesses to thrive and for beneficiaries’ quality of life to improve. We also regret not challenging some media for unethical reporting of some cases and falsely accusing our leadership of stolen funds. As we respect the independence of media, we would, however, like to advise media to verify facts before publishing false stories.
As I step back for others to step up, I’m humbled to have led a department that quietly achieved five consecutive clean audit outcomes and many other accolades and awards in various programmes and for acting against fraud and corruption. My sincere gratitude goes to team social development and all our partners for these humble accomplishments, knowing a lot more work still needs to be done to transform society for the betterment of people’s lives and to promote good governance.
As I bow out, I wish to thank respective journalists, photographers and media houses for having reported the good, the bad and the ugly of our work, as all we strived towards was improving quality of life of those who depend on the state because, like one of the greatest revolutionaries of the continent, Almicar Cabral, said: “Tell no lies, expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures, claim no easy victories.”
Nandi Mayathula-Khoza, outgoing MEC for Social Development
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