Cape Town - South Africans from all walks of life must ask themselves what they can do to create jobs and address South Africa's massive unemployment rate, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a media briefing ahead of his address to Parliament where he presented his Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, Gordhan said the government's New Economic Growth Path called for a "radical shift" in the South African economy.
The new plan, which was presented on Tuesday by Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel, and would be mapped out in the next six months, envisages the creation of five million jobs by 2020.
"The growth path isn't about how we create a few jobs in a few sectors; it's about saying how do we mobilise every single human being that is within the South African borders, how do we take every sector of the South African economy and our society and ask the question, what does each one of us have to do, what does each one of us have to contribute in order for South Africa to move itself onto a completely new growth trajectory."
He said no "cosmetic change" in the country's economy and current way of doing business would bring down the country's high unemployment rate of 25 percent.
"No cosmetic change is going to ensure that nobody goes to bed in South Africa hungry. That must be an objective that all of us must share," he said.
"No cosmetic change is going to address the skills question in South Africa, which is a serious constraint on economic growth. It's a serious constraint on what kind of jobs we can create and what kind of businesses and industries we can create in South Africa," he said.
"We can't have lots of people sitting at the low end in terms of the skills that we are going to create and then say we are going to create high-end jobs."
Gordhan said South Africa needed to build a plan which allowed entrepreneurs, workers and professionals to flourish.
