In a move anchored in the belief that South Africa’s challenge is not lack of money but rather inefficient expenditure of public funds leading to decaying infrastructure, the Construction Education Training Authority (CETA) is calling on the Government to do two things: professionalise the public sector and increase infrastructure investment for areas including basic education, basic transportation, water and sanitation, as well as Technical and Vocational Education and Training, writes Ido Lekota.
According to a recent World Bank Report, it is estimated that from 2022 to 2030, South Africa will need to set aside between R4.8 trillion and R6.2 trillion for these areas. This translates into 8.7% to 11.2% of the GDP needing to be spent annually. For the past five years, South Africa has spent an average of 5.8% of its GDP on these areas.
The Report also emphasises the necessity for investment supported by competent management, maintenance, and good governance by highlighting the critical influence of infrastructure, service quality and management on an inclusive, sustainable economy.
“The fact that there are reports of municipalities failing to spend their budgets despite adopting Integrated Development Plans indicates that money is not a problem. On the other hand, the country’s decaying infrastructure – which undermines economic growth and the fact that, as a country, we fall short of the budget requirements of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals is a clear indication that we need to do both – improve efficiency and the budget allocation”, argues CETA CEO Malusi Shezi.
“An efficient infrastructure is the lifeblood of every economy. Due to a lack of efficient infrastructure, it takes too long to bring your goods to the market, which affects your production level and the overall economy. It would be best to have infrastructure to run a digital economy. Telecommunication companies need masts – part of the public infrastructure – to provide business and public cellular networks, etc. To achieve all these, we need an efficient public infrastructure and the requisite efficiently run budget.”
Shezi believes improving efficiency as well the budget allocation in basic and Technical and Vocational Education and Training would go a long way in enhancing the skills base – especially in the construction and building environment – thus enabling the sector to make a qualitative contribution towards job creation and the overall growth of the country’s economy.
He also believes that the current education system does not encourage a spirit of much-needed entrepreneurship – which, in his view, will go a long way in addressing the lack of participation of the majority of the South African youth in the economy.
“We need qualified job seekers and job creators if we change the country’s economic landscape. We need an education system that creates a cadre of entrepreneurs who will change the face of business in this country. That kind of education must be available to them from their formative years. Exposure to that kind of education will also change the cultural orientation of young people in this country – in line with what we see within other cultural groups – especially those from the East.”
It is Shezi’s view that CETA’s mandate, like all other SETAS (Sector Education and Training Authorities), is to meet the skills requirement of the country’s various economic sectors, thereby contributing to the country’s economic growth. However, Shezi argues that there is a more significant mandate to contribute to the country’s overall transformation.
We need an education system that creates a cadre of entrepreneurs who will change the face of business in this country. That kind of education must be available to them from their formative years.
This is because of CETA’s understanding of “transformation” as a catalyst to address the country’s socio-economic problems and history of exclusion can contribute to equity and inclusivity.
It is to this end that CETA has signed MOUs with various strategic partners including industry bodies such as the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), Council for the Built Environment (CBE), South African Institute of Black Property Practitioners (SAIBPP), Black Business Council (BBC), institutions of higher learning such as the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), universities and TVET colleges as well as government agencies such as the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), foreign government agencies, local authorities, unions and individual companies..
The nature of these partnerships ranges from the skilling of new entrants or the unemployed, enhancing the skills of the existing workforce in the construction sector, responding to the changing sectorial needs and priorities – including transformation via small business development, as well as strengthening and expanding those strategic partnerships to maximise sustainability and impact.
An example of CETA’s partnerships with these stakeholders is a joint pilot project between the South African-based China Education and Culture Centre (CECE) and TVET Colleges offering construction and built environment industry. In terms of the partnership, learners at identified TVET Colleges were sent to China to learn how to manufacture, install and repair solar panels. The ultimate objective is to turn these TVET Colleges into manufacturing hubs – where the learners can gain practical experience in the TVET Colleges workshops. This will alleviate the current situation where the learners depend on individual companies to offer them opportunities for practical work. On the other hand, turning the TVET Colleges into manufacturing hubs will contribute to their financial viability. The programme is half-funded by CETA and CECE on a 50/50 basis.
CETA provides financial support to these interventions, which, in some cases, may include providing apprenticeships, learnerships, and placement opportunities for TVET graduates, as well as short-term causes based on Recognition of Prior Learning and the funding of bursaries. A recently released report on the 2023 /24 financials shows that CETA has funded 1467 beneficiaries to the scheme to the tune of R73 433 000.
A recently released CETA report shows that for the 2023/24 financial year, the organisation has funded bursaries for 229 bursars to the tune of R27.5 million. These include:
- 5 PhDs at R1.1 million, 80% of which were female.
- 13 Masters at R2.6 million, 100% females
- 9 Missing-middle Honours candidates at R1million of which 88% were males
- Thirty missing 1st Year students at R3.6 million and R7.2 million for an entire study period, of which 53% are females.
- 45 1st Years at R5.2 million and R10.5 million for a whole study period, of which 53% of females
Other skills development interventions driven by CETA include supporting candidacy programmes for careers such as architecture, engineering, quantity surveying, Property Assessors and Evaluators.
This entails funding candidates to register with the specific professional council, where a candidate will spend between 2 to 5 years (depending on the industry) enrolled in a course of studies leading to a certificate in a specific field of study.
Meanwhile, CETA is exploring the possibility of tapping into the African Union trillion-rand worth skills training and development budget by creating exchange programmes with learning and training institutions in the continent.
Recently, CETA signed an MOU with BBC, in which BBC members who are in the construction industry will, among others, offer work-experience opportunities for TVET college trainees and graduates.
“BBC as an organisation is driven by its commitment to the transformation of this country’s economy and for CETA transformation matters – hence our partnership with BBC.”
In terms of the agreement, the BBC has also committed to engage the Development Bank of South Africa – as a funding agency for infrastructure development in Southern Africa – about the possibility of having the contraction companies funded by the agency commit to contribute 1% of their operation costs to the skills levy.
Most of the partnerships with institutions of higher learning are about tapping into those institutions’ capacity to contribute to skills development in the construction industry and those institutions’ commitment to transformation by, for example, extending access to their facilities to special groups such as women in construction. Other examples of such partnership include establishing the Built Environment Recognition Awards with the CBE–in response to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s SONA 2023 -2024 call for the professionalisation of the public sector.
In response to President Ramaphosa’s Economic Rapid Recovery Plan, CETA has also embarked on strategic initiatives to broaden South African youth’s access to training, education, and skill opportunities.
These include the establishment of:
- Mahumani Traditional Authority Smart Skills Centre in Giyani, Limpopo, with a minimum investment of R92 million.
- Ngoje Lousburg Skills Development Centre in the Zululand District area with a minimum investment of R50 million
- Northern Cape Port Nolloth Skills Development Centre with a minimum investment of R30 million. This project is linked to the Boegoe Baai Port and Hydrogen Mega Project – part of the Government’s Northern Cape Green Hydrogen Strategy.
- Anene Booysen Simulation and Trade Test Centre in Cape Agulhas
- Our Lady of Ingwavuma Skills Development Centre
Boegoebaai is situated approximately 60 km north of Port Nolloth and 20 km south of the border between Namibia and South Africa, in the Richtersveld Local Municipality area of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. In terms of positioning, the primary opportunity of the Boegoe Baai Port is that the site is a short distance between the coastline and the relatively deep water.
This location places the project relatively close to affluent mining and agriculture sectors compared to other existing ports. With the advent of the green hydrogen economy, CETA believes that the Boegoebaai will provide an enabling platform for the Northern Cape to achieve the kind of economic development the authority aspires for.
The Northern Cape Province has the volumes of commodities to warrant a deep-sea commercial port, specifically as a result of mining and agricultural activities. All commodities are currently transported via road or rail for exports through ports in other provinces, effectively making the Northern Cape economically landlocked, even though it has access to 338 km of Atlantic coastline.
The Boegoebaai site has all the advantages for the potential development of a deep-sea port, namely:
- The 20-metre contour is 250 m offshore
- It is a greenfield site owned by the people of the Richtersveld through the Community Property Association (CPA)
The port will have the Dry Bulk Terminal for exports; Liquid Bulk Terminal to handle various bulk liquid products and a Multi-Purpose Container Terminal. The project is being developed in terms of the PPP Project Cycle in terms of the Treasury Regulation 16 of the Public Finance Management Act, 1999. The development of a Northern Cape Provincial SEZ Establishment Framework will be used for a Special Economic Zone as an economic growth and development instrument to attract new local and foreign investment.
This project will be structured as a PPP, primarily to transfer risk and to source investment. Optimal risk allocation creates value. By granting a long-term concession, market, investment, and operational risks can be transferred to a terminal that can absorb part of the commercial risk.
A PPP for a deep-water port of the nature being contemplated at Boegoebaai would typically operate within a concession framework. This means that the private party/concessionaire is granted permission by the appropriate public procuring entity to design, build, finance, insure, operate and maintain the port and collect revenues from it, for a fixed period of time after which the port will be handed back to the public entity.
With the advent of the green hydrogen economy, the Boegoebaai Port will provide an enabling platform for the province to achieve the key frontiers proposed in the 2021 Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium South Africa (SIDSSA).
The potential of the green hydrogen economy has sparked the country to focus on developing the Green Hydrogen Strategy, with a focus on the Northern Cape as an important driver towards a Just Energy Transition. The aim is for South Africa to follow a three-pronged approach with regards to the development of green hydrogen:
- South Africa to be one of the low cost exporters of green hydrogen derived products
- Enable decarbonization of local industry
- Utilize mineral endowments and green hydrogen production capacity to improve the country’s global competitiveness of its economy and industry champions.
The Northern Cape Hydrogen Strategy, together with the Department of Science and Innovation’s Hydrogen Society Roadmap for South Africa and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s sector master plans and green hydrogen commercialization strategy will be the foundation of a National Green Hydrogen Strategy.
The Northern Cape Green Hydrogen Strategy has six objectives:
- To position the Northern Cape as a future leader in green hydrogen production and export;
- To enable the province’s green hydrogen potential through the development of catalytic infrastructure in the form of the planned Boegoebaai Port and Rail development, and adjacent Green Hydrogen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), storage infrastructure, transmission grids, and pipelines;
- To have 5 GW of electrolysis capacity supported by 10 GW of renewable energy generation under construction in the Northern Cape by 2025 – 2026;
- To maximize the job creation, skills development, youth employment, and investment attraction potential of green hydrogen. This will be done through the strategic localisation and reindustrialization of manufacturing aimed at green hydrogen and renewable energy components and products, including attracting tier-1 solar photovoltaic (PV) panel and wind turbine manufacturers to the Northern Cape by 2025;
- To utilize the Northern Cape’s green hydrogen generation capacity to support the accelerated decarbonization of the South African economy, especially the large, carbon-intensive industrial base, and to attract heavy industry wishing to ‘go green’ to relocate to South Africa;
- To utilise green hydrogen and concessional development finance to support a Just Energy Transition in South Africa.
For Shezi, whatever partnerships CETA forms with the various stakeholders must be driven by a commitment to some basic principles linked to the broader transformation agenda.
These include:
- A fervent belief in Employment Equity – which is driven by the recognition of (given our history) the exclusionary nature of race, gender and disability when it comes to the employee profile in the country.
- Commitment to providing opportunities to young people – especially those in the “not in employment nor training” (NEET) group.
- Commitment to enabling access to particular groups – such as women – in the construction industry.
- Commitment to extending access to CETA priority programmes to people in rural areas.
- The belief is in improving the skills profile of those from poor socio-economic backgrounds by promoting career paths in the workplace.
The CETA CEO also believes that the regulatory environment in this country must be reviewed to make it easier for people to start businesses. He also raised the issue of red tape in Government and how that contributes to the failure of starter businesses in this country. As far as Shezi is concerned, the government red tape is undermining CETA’s mission “to provide skills development services by implementing the objectives of the National Skills Development Plan (NSDP 2030); to increase the number of people that obtain critical or scarce skills needed, and to build the capacity of the construction sector to be economically sustainable and globally competitive.” It is CETA’s mandate to research the skills employers need to help –especially the Government – understand the skills required for the construction industry and, therefore, put mechanisms in place to address the situation.
CETA is also responsible for identifying skills gaps and developing appropriate education and training programmes to address skills shortages in line with the skills needs of the construction industry.
CETA also funds several learning programmes, including skills programmes, learnerships, apprenticeships, internships and bursaries at public education and training institutions such as Universities and TVET Colleges.
A significant requirement for CETA and all other SETAS to execute the eventual mission of providing quality skills for the country’s economy – is that the skills provided in line with its mandate must be of high quality. Previously, the issue of the quality of training that some of the CETA-accredited service providers have been questioned – with complaints that their graduates were not attuned to a work environment.
Shezi believes that this situation has been addressed. The kind of graduates produced by the CETA-approved service provider are fit for purpose – the gap is only because – because of the low economic growth – there are not enough work placement opportunities for those in need of practical experience – but the kind of training they have will stand them well in the future where there is an economic turn-around.
The CETA CEO also believes that the regulatory environment in this country must be reviewed to make it easier for people to start businesses.
CETA has six flagship projects:
- Apprenticeship programme
- Candidacy
- Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)
- International placement (internship)
- Thapelo Madibeng Bursary Scheme
- CETA Academy
- Apprenticeships programme
The CETA is an artisanal SETA, as our main target is to produce as many artisans as possible to respond to the decade of artisan target set by DHET to produce 30,000 artisans per year by 2020. Finding workplaces for learners‘ practical training is a challenge; the CETA is adopting the dual vocational training system (highly implemented in Germany), where it partners with small and medium-sized companies and publicly funded vocational schools to implement the system. Learners spend part of each week at a vocational school and the other part at a company, or they may spend more than a week at each place before alternating. CETA has partnered with Umfolozi TVET College and Kreishandwerkerschaft (KH), where the system is piloted. The CETA also supports this system through the Centres of Specialisation project launched by the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Honorable Naledi Pandor, on the 8th of October 2018. CETA is funding ten projects through discretionary grants where an initial number of 105 artisans are trained under this system.
Candidacy programme
The candidacy programme enrols graduates studying in the built environment sector. They comprise architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, landscape architects, project and construction managers, and property evaluators. Graduates freshly from universities in the disciplines highlighted above are not yet professionals; they are candidates eligible to go through the candidacy program with the ultimate goal of becoming professionals. To become a professional, a candidate registers first as a candidate with the relevant professional council and goes through two, three, or five or more years of work experience before being subjected to a final assessment by the council. When the candidate is declared competent, they receive a certification and are declared professional. CETA funded 2 222 candidates from 2014 to 2018, making candidacy one of its flagship programmes to ensure that previously disadvantaged graduates register as professionals after completing the programme. This will cater to the critical and scarce skills identified in most built environment professions mentioned above. CETA also targets many candidates who have been working for an extended period and have yet to be able to register so that they can be assisted in registering as professionals.
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)
RPL recognises individuals through a recognised certificate, assessment, and evaluation of their knowledge and work. This is irrespective of where they got the expertise and where they have applied it for years.
CETA has been funding RPL at a low pace, but it has put more emphasis on this learning pathway since the 2018/19 financial year. The funding has been increased to reach a high number of people who need to be RPLed, specifically people who have registered for this purpose with the Department of Labour and many other individuals who are seen in front of shops or along the streets carrying one or two tools hoping and looking for a job, even though they have no certificate to prove their knowledge.
International placement of learners through internships
Workplace experience availability through internship has been hard to find since 2012 for most of our projects. Employers have been reluctant to open doors to learners needing practical experience, and the construction industry has been in recess for a few years, making it challenging to find workplaces for learners.
CETA has embarked on a project of placing learners abroad, with the first group of 300 learners to be placed in different companies in China where they will be exposed to practical construction in the field of built environment.
This programme explicitly targets TVET graduates who experience high unemployment when they leave school and will spend 12 months in China to enhance their knowledge and gain experience. The learners will get theoretical training in different Chinese universities for six months. They will be placed in various companies for the remaining six months to gain on-the-job experience. On their return, an exit strategy has been put in place for their placement in different South African and Chinese companies in South Africa and Africa for employment.
Thapelo Madibeng Bursary Scheme
CETA has opened a bursary scheme targeting 2000 students who wish to pursue a career in the build environment field. This Bursary scheme is dedicated to Mr Thapelo Madibeng, a CETA Core Business Executive who has contributed significantly to advancing skills development. The strategic goal in line with this initiative is to have “an increased pool of skilled and competent graduates entering the construction sector”. The application to the scheme is already open, and students can apply through an online link on the CETA website.
The CETA Academy
The CETA is establishing an academy to provide SETA with customised skills that will enable SETA to implement skills development. It aims to close knowledge gaps in the sector, develop programme qualifications, and identify courses that meet short-term needs. The programmes will align with SAQA standards and professional bodies and secure appropriate accreditations. The research will include a literature review to identify what has worked elsewhere.
During a recent media briefing, CETA’s board chairman, Thabo Masombuka, raised the issue of red tape in Government.
Masombuka was responding to an offer by an official from the Gauteng Economic Development Department to form some partnership with CETA – as a way of contributing to job creation.
In response, Masombuka indicated that CETA was open to forming some partnerships with government structures, but in their experience, red tape has had such previous initiatives. He also highlighted how, in some instances, self-centredness by government officials has undermined potentially effective initiatives – simply because such an initiative is not driven by themselves.
There was also the issue of how politics interfere with the smooth-running of such initiatives – whereby an official sabotages a viable project simply because someone from a different faction within the ruling party initiated it.
As some commentators say, this is part of the vagaries of the conflation of the ruling party with the state.
For Shezi, this untenable situation can only be resolved by professionalising the public sector.
Ido Lekota is a former Sowetan Editor and regular contributor to Leadership Magazine.
