We meet only eighteen months away from the next general election. If the IFP wins in 2009, South Africa wins. This conference must be a businesslike conference to show that we are a winning party. I want each one of us to focus on what we must do for an IFP victory in 2009. In a crisis, we must show courage and strength of character. That South Africa is in crisis is clear to all. The crisis is evidenced by a general breakdown of principle in the public life. The people of South Africa look to the IFP not to capitalise on our political opponents’ misfortunes, but to show a better way ahead: the IFP way. 

We must place our party on maximum election readiness. My role is to motivate and, I hope, inspire you. My utterances, contrary to what some say, are not ex-cathedra in the IFP. I am ready to listen to your ideas about what we need to do to win. You have won us elections in the past, so you are experts, so to speak. Our presence here today testifies that the IFP is a potent force in South African politics. 

Our demise has been predicted many times, but we have prevailed and we will continue to prevail. Politics, in the end, is a numbers game. We can have the most finely crafted slogans and policies, but without votes, we are consigned to irrelevance and, ultimately, oblivion. This conference must be about winning more votes in 2009, because having principles without power is pointless. 

I want briefly to deal with the issue of a deputy president before moving on.

The facts are plain. The IFP constitution does not provide for a deputy president, but in the unlikely event of a change of leader midterm, the National Chairperson would become Acting President. The Acting President would call an elective conference to elect the party's new leader. I think some confusion has arisen because the ANC has a deputy president. And let me pose this question: If it was axiomatic that the ANC's deputy president would become president, why would the present deputy president campaign for office virtually independently of party structures and against the explicit wishes of the current ANC leadership? 

The IFP has a different constitution to the ANC’s and, with all due respect, I ask members and media commentators to recognise that. I am presently serving a five-year term after winning a clear mandate in 2004. That mandate was bolstered again last year at a special conference when I resigned.  I, God willing, will lead the IFP to victory in the 2009 election. 

I salute those who aspire to lead the IFP. As I look at the IFP stalwarts arrayed here today, I am reminded that there can be no greater honour. There is nothing stopping any IFP member throwing their hat into the ring in a leadership contest. We cannot, however, be holding elective conferences every five minutes. That is not leadership. That is chaos. To friends and foes alike, I remind you: I lead my party, I do not follow it! This weekend is not an elective conference. We are governed by a constitution which clearly spells out the procedures for party and leadership elections. Let us focus on being ready for the upcoming parliamentary election. Let us on move on to the pertinent issues. What are these issues? 

The biggest political battleground in the forthcoming election will be the economy. The economy is the great divide in South African politics today. We must make the election about the economy, not about political personalities.

The IFP has consistently pointed out that the Expanded Public Works Programme, for all its theoretical merits, can never be the answer to our high levels of structural unemployment. What South Africa needs to create jobs is an open labour market and we must create jobs fast. 

As many of you know the lofty vision of the Expanded Public Works Programme was to create five million jobs over five years and bridge the gap between the 'second' and 'first' economy. This has proved to be wildly optimistic. The IFP has consistently pointed out the EPWP can never be an unemployment panacea, though we agree with the merit of the particular programmes. My reasons are simple: the EPWP is not part of an open labour market - in fact the programme further entrenches the existing overregulation on the job market - and most of the working jobs created last only as long as the infrastructural programme that has prompted them. 

Yet the EPWP has an important role to play by training so-called 'unemployable' workers into employable ones and investing in much needed public works programmes. Economists agree that to cut through the structural conditions that produce large-scale poverty, the growth rate needs to be increased to six percent plus, a similar pace to other comparable emerging markets. 

According to the optimistic scenario of a Goldman Sachs model, if the economy grew faster than six per cent, unemployment would fall to 11 per cent by 2014.

At present, according to a recent report by the South African Institute of Race Relations, over the past decade South Africans have been entering the job market faster than the population of working age has been growing. The government model, based largely on wishful thinking, therefore does not add up. 

We must find a way to create a knowledge-based society through mutually beneficial socio-economic interaction. At least in theory, South Africa supports investment in infrastructure and research and development in fields such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and avionics. Many local IT businesses concentrated in and around Johannesburg are fair competitors to their counterparts in Western Europe, North America and the Far East. In addition, South Africa must also be actively branded as an international high-quality food producer and promote the 'Green Revolution', which encourages non-land intensive, labour intensive and high value added crops. 

None of these achievements can be credibly attributed to the state and its interventions in the South African economy. They are the results of free enterprise. If the state is to benefit from such excellence, it must let it grow in the most propitious climate, namely in the private sector. 

The trends we see now are not always promising. The state continues to own – and mismanage - huge sectors of the economy. Essentially, the state controls almost all the utilities and still controls Telkom, despite its listing on the stock market. This creates major market distortions and inefficiencies. The government must accelerate the privatisation of all the parastatals and outsource suitable government functions as a matter of urgency. 

In order to reverse the trend, the state needs to open up. For starters, the IFP believes the state needs to assist with access to capital for Small, Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMMEs) and work with micro-financial institutions and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund to help set up sustainable credit guarantee schemes, creating in effect a bridge between risk-averse banks and young entrepreneurs. Access to start up capital has been a consistent feature of all emerging economies. 

The heart-and-head split in government policy makers’ thinking is also expressed in its reluctance to develop standard anti-trust and a pro-competition legislation to break the grip of our private and public cartels and monopolies on our economy. 

The consequences are painful for all who participate in this so-called 'free market'. Our bank charges, for example, are amongst the highest in the world.

What incentive is there for poor people to place their money into bank accounts? To see their deposits ebb away through bank charges? Yet without banking facilities, people do not have access to loans to purchase property or start their own small businesses. These are the prerequisites of a functioning market economy, from South Africa. 

As dogged believers in the free market, we in the IFP believe wealth creation is a morally neutral activity. It is what one does with wealth that is important. Many in the ANC have clearly twisted the fundamentals of the free market model to suit the needs of its real constituency - the lucky elite few in its own ranks at the expense of the unlucky masses. 

To measure the real success of our own free market model in practice, we also need to look at our General Well Being (GWB). On another - and equally important - level it implies one's sense of belonging to society, participation in civic society, health and spiritual wholeness. 

The ANC has, there is no doubt, managed to keep the appearances of a growing economy. The substance of this growth on the ground, however, is as vacuous for many as the ruling party's repetitive election promises. For without a basis in meritocracy, hard work, integrity and genuine individualism, the South African free market model will never eradicate poverty and despair or make a visible dent on unemployment and crime. These are the issues we must talk about this weekend. Your past deliberations have convinced me that you have a solid understanding of the issues and the right instincts to propose solutions. The forum for debate is now yours. 

I thank you. 

Contact: Jon Cayzer
084 555 7144