President Cyril Ramaphosa says the signing of a the Social Sector Framework agreement with civil society on Friday is an important milestone in tackling the challenges ordinary South Africans face. Ramaphosa was speaking at the Presidential Social Sector Summit which sat for the last two days in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.
The summit is the first of its kind, having been first mooted during the 2018 State of the Nation Address by the President.
“Through that we are establishing a more comprehensive and inclusive framework for collaboration that recognises but also that supports and empowers civil society and for me that is what has been so important about this summit because it sets the basis for us to foster a strong state-civil society partnership to tackle some of the challenges our country faces, poverty, inequality, employment and to deepen democratic participation.”
The president has thanked non-governmental organisations for the role they played in helping the country to curb coronavirus.
“With our country and indeed the world now in the process of recovery, I want to thank and salute civil society organisations for their role in the national effort to contain and overcome the pandemic. There are few words to describe the pride and gratitude we felt as a country as we saw our resilient and committed non-governmental organisations serving the South African people during those difficult days.”
Kagiso shutdown
Ramaphosa says an imbizo will be convened this weekend between government and the community of Kagiso west of Johannesburg. It is meant to interrogate issues of illegal mining and criminality in that area.
He addressed the loss of life and damage to infrastructure, which has taken place over the last few days in Kagiso, as well as Tembisa.
“There are quite a number of communities around the country where illegal mining has been taking place where the zama zamas have been active and all I can say is that the Commissioner of Police together with the Minister have set up teams that are going to deal with this issue of illegal mining and deal with the zama zamas and the very illegal activities that they involved in particularly in terrorising our communities, we will put this to an end.”
Police demolished the operation sites of zama zamas on Thursday :
