Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you! -----Original Message----- From: Takalani Mmbengeni <[email protected]> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 15:03:16 To: <[email protected]> Subject: Speech of President of SANACO Mr. Lawrence Bale
Date: 02/07/2011 Programme Director Executive Deputy Chairperson of the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA): *Mr. Yershen Pillay* International Cooperatives Alliance (ICA): *Mr. Vincent Lubasi* Eastern Cape Premier: *Honourable Ms. Noxolo Kiviet* Minister of Trade and Industry : *Honourable Dr. Rob Davies* Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry: *Honourable Elizabeth Thabethe* SANACO* Leadership and Members* * * * * *The* South African National Apex structure is only representative in the country. Its membership consists of both primary and secondary cooperatives. Throughout the world, the cooperatives movement is predominantly constituted by adults, this has become a serious challenge for the development of society, through the cooperative movement as an alternative model now and in the future. Youth involvement in the cooperatives movement continues to be highly underrepresented in the country as well as most other African countries. The African countries are most of the poorest region, although it has a wealth of natural resources. In South Africa we have a high number of economically active and energetic populations made of young people who consist of more than 50% of the country’s population. This year has been declared by the United Nations as the Year of Youth. The cooperative movement globally celebrates every year an International day for Cooperatives every 1st Saturday of July. Our theme for this year focuses on Young people encouraging youth to participate in their development through cooperatives. We have established a youth desk to interact with youth organizations in order to speed up and have a dedicated focus on the recruitment of young people into the cooperative movement. This is informed by the decision of our umbrella body globally, this is the International Cooperative Alliance which SANACO as the representative of the cooperatives in the country is a member thereof. There are three key challenges facing the cooperatives in the country, which requires urgent attention by all stake holders, there are underlined below: Technical Training, Access to Market and Funding. *Technical Training*: The baseline study conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry reveals that technical training and capacity building for cooperatives is a major challenge in the country. This is so because amongst other challenges there are very few young people involved in cooperatives to reduce this specific challenge. Majority of the Membership of cooperatives in the country are people above the age of 35 year and some of them have proven to be very difficult in being trained in order to build the quality of products that they produce, this will open up opportunities for cooperatives worldwide. In addressing this challenge the South African National Apex Cooperative has engaged and agreed with the Department of Higher Education and Training, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the National Youth Development Agency to avail the resources for capacity building of cooperatives. We have now signed an agreement with the DBSA, this agreement seeks to serve all cooperatives in the country irrespective of their membership status to SANACO. It is important though that all cooperatives in the country must belong to SANACO as their home, I want to repeat THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL APEX COOPERATIVE IS THE ONLY BODY THAT IS REPRESENTING THE INTEREST OF COOPERATIVES IN THE COUNTRY, IT IS THE ONLY BODY YOU AS COOPERATIVES MUST ASSOCIATE WITH. It is important to note that we will not become successful is we are divided on this regard. *Access to Market:* The second most important challenge is the Market, is the availability of markets for cooperatives in all sectors. More importantly though as an additional challenge to South African cooperatives is the lack of mass production to service the already monopolised market. We need help cooperatives to improve their quality of products so that they can be consumable. The cooperatives in the country have the potential to produce products that are consumable and bankable. We need to ensure that all the necessary requirements for the products produced by the cooperatives that enter into the market is met. This will enable us to service the opportunities that SANACO is advocating for. In this regard SANACO calls on all state institutions, department and communities to buy from cooperatives; we must by from ourselves to sustain ourselves. The SANACO together with the department of Trade and Industry has signed an agreement on behalf of South African cooperative to do business with the BRICS countries, this opportunity would not have been possible without the working relationship with the Department of Trade and Industry and SANACO. We are moving forward to engage the Southern African Developing Communities to have a similar agreement with a view to reinforce the agreement we had with the BRICS communities. We will utilise the position we hold in the SADC Federation of Cooperatives to champion the interest of cooperatives in the country and abroad. Furthermore it is important that we make this extra ordinary call to our government that it must avail 30% of the Procurement spend towards cooperatives. This should be legislated to avoid any misunderstanding among officials in government. We will create Electronic based Platforms for cooperatives to market themselves and also network amongst each other. It is going to be very much crucial when it come to branding of products it should state that it is a cooperative brand. This will help us in assessing the impact of cooperatives in the market. Our call for in this regard is that all cooperatives producing any form of products must ensure that they bear their logo. We are currently engaging *Proudly South African* to assure the quality of products produced by cooperatives in our country. *Funding: *Most cooperatives in the country are unable to access the current funding made available in the country, due to a lack of understanding by those who have the responsibility to disburse funding to cooperatives. The major challenge seems to be in the model of funding for cooperatives developed by most government institutions. We call on Government to re-visit their funding models for cooperatives. The Eastern Cape’s Imvuba Fund as well as other funding models developed must respond to the needs of the cooperatives, there should be no cooperative that should be refused funding without any reason. If a cooperative applies for funding such a cooperative must be assisted for this funding, for as long as there is a potential for such cooperatives to create sustainable opportunities which will address the challenges faced by our society, unemployment, poverty, inequality and under development. With this problem in mind SANACO has initiated the Cooperative Bank to be established, the SANACO Cooperative Bank will assist its members and fund new initiatives, it is anticipated that the bank will take a minimum of 5 years to be fully operational to its members all over South Africa, this bank will prioritise best service to its members and will ensure that the banking rates are more to the benefit of members. To this end the SANACO has initiated a solidarity fund to assist ailing cooperatives that contributed to the fund and has the potential to recover. The fund will be launched during the year of cooperatives 2012. Activities will be undertaken to raise resources towards the solidarity fund. *In Conclusion* the South African National Apex Cooperative calls on all Cooperatives to participate in the development of the South African Cooperative Charter which will create economic freedom in our life time. This charter will be our policy for our own development as cooperatives in the country, it will be used to shape government policy and inform other public entities on how they should engage cooperatives. The Department of Trade and Industry is very strategic in the development and support of cooperatives in the country, as a government arm it should never create or attempt to create disunity amongst cooperatives. There is more to gain in a unified cooperative movement than a divided cooperative movement. The officials of the department should focus on their responsibilities of creating the environment for strong and vibrant cooperatives in South Africa. For more information contact the SANACO Acting Spokesperson Mmbengeni Takalani at 082 625 1706 Or [email protected] -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
