YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: As South Africa positions itself to invest massively in infrastructure, how can such spending redefine the futures of millions of young people. Is it merely about constructing physical assets, or can it simultaneously weave hope, opportunity, and skills into the fabric of society? The time to address these urgent questions is now.
South Africa is preparing to spend more than a trillion rand on infrastructure while millions of young people remain locked outside the formal economy, and that contradiction should force us to confront a question that is considerably more uncomfortable than whether government is spending enough: are we building infrastructure to transform society, or have we become so consumed by the machinery of procurement that the contract has quietly become more important than the outcome?
It is against this background that KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's intervention deserves considerably more attention than it has received. Speaking at the Parliamentary Summit on Gangs and Violent Crime in his capacity as head of the National Organised Crime Task Team, Mkhwanazi argued that government should reconsider how it issues tenders for public works and use infrastructure spending itself as a mechanism for creating employment, including through greater direct participation by the state rather than automatically outsourcing work to contractors.
