Deputy Minister Mmapaseka Steve Letsike: South African Social and Solidarity Economy Symposium

Programme Director, Ms Mbali Williams;
Minister and Deputy Ministers present;
Representatives of the African Union, the International Labour Organization and our international development partners;
Leaders of social enterprises, cooperatives, mutual organisations and community-based institutions;
Representatives of organised labour, business, academia and civil society;
Distinguished guests;
Fellow South Africans and fellow Africans;

Good morning.

I would like to begin with a proposition. Long before the phrase “social and solidarity economy” entered policy documents, development plans orinternational resolutions, African people understood that no person flourishes entirely apart from the community.

Across our continent’s many and diverse societies, we find long traditions of reciprocal labour, rotating savings, mutual aid, communal stewardship and collective responsibility. Ubuntu, or unhu, is one language through which this understanding has been expressed. It reminds us that personhood is formed through relationship and that individual wellbeing is inseparable from the well-being of others.

We should not romanticise this history. African societies have also contained hierarchy, patriarchy and exclusion. Our task is not to return to an imagined past, but to retrieve the emancipatory elements of our social ethics and reconstruct them within a democratic, constitutional and rightsbased order.

Colonialism did not introduce economic organisation to Africa. It reorganised African economies around dispossession, extraction, migrant labour and ownership located elsewhere. Apartheid deepened that architecture by separating people from land, controlling their movement and preventing the majority from accumulating productive power.

That history matters because Ubuntu cannot become a warm word we invoke when communities are expected to endure hardship. If Ubuntu is to have economic meaning, it must help us answer difficult questions: Who owns? Who decides? Who carries the risk? Who performs the work? And who receives the value?

The women who marched in 1956 understood these questions. They knew that controlling a woman’s movement also controlled her labour, family, choices and economic future. Their struggle was against a political economy that treated Black women’s bodies and labour as instruments of an unjust system.

The youth who rose in 1976 similarly understood that education is inseparable from economic power. They rejected a system designed to reproduce subordination and insisted upon the right to construct a future not predetermined by others.

The Constitution adopted in 1996 gathered these struggles into a democratic promise. It established a society founded upon dignity, equality, freedom, non-racialism and non-sexism. It committed the democratic state not only to recognise rights in law, but progressively to transform the material conditions that prevent people from exercising those rights in practice.

Over three decades, our constitutional democracy has created democratic institutions, dismantled discriminatory laws, extended social protection and expanded access to public services. We should acknowledge this progress while recognising that the constitutional project remains unfinished. The Constitution is not self-executing. It gives us the destination and the democratic framework through which society must continue the work of transformation.

The persistence of unemployment, poverty, inequality and spatial exclusion does not diminish the Constitution. It makes the urgency of its implementation even clearer. The unfinished work of freedom is to make constitutional belonging material.

This is where the social and solidarity economy becomes important. SSE can be part of the machinery through which constitutional values acquire economic form: dignity as decent work; equality as access to capital, assets and markets; freedom as economic agency and ownership; and participation as democratic governance.

We are therefore not discussing a charitable annex to the so-called real economy. We are discussing one component of a constitutional political economy: an economy whose institutions, ownership patterns and measures of value increasingly reflect the society envisaged in our founding law.

This matters because constitutional rights are sustained not only by courts and laws, but by the material capabilities that allow people to exercise them. A person who is formally free but permanently excluded from work, assets, finance and economic decision-making experiences freedom incompletely. The constitutional project therefore requires us to broaden the institutions through which people produce, own and govern economic value. SSE is one such institution-building pathway, alongside a capable state, responsible business and organised labour. SSE organisations undertake real economic activity but place social or public purpose, collective benefit and democratic participation ahead of unrestricted profit. They include cooperatives, mutual organisations, associations, community enterprises and qualifying social-purpose businesses.

But SSE is not a romantic name for poverty, and not every informal activity or small business forms part of it. It cannot become cheap outsourcing of public responsibilities, nor can social purpose excuse poor governance or exploitation. Its character must be evident in how workers are treated, surpluses are used, communities participate and value is distributed.

We advance this discussion at an important moment. South Africa’s economy grew by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2026, its sixth consecutive quarter of growth. This progress matters, although manufacturing contracted and productive investment weakened.

In the second quarter, 8.5 million South Africans were officially unemployed. The official unemployment rate stood at 33.6%, while youth unemployment had risen to 47.4%. For women, the unemployment rate was 37.5%, more than 7 percentage points higher than the rate for men. The honest account is neither that nothing is improving nor that recovery has reached everyone. Economic stabilisation has not yet become inclusion at the required scale. Our economy is producing activity, but not yet belonging for millions who possess knowledge, energy and the willingness to work.

The generation of 1976 rejected a predetermined place in the economy. Fifty years later, we cannot ask young people to celebrate political freedom while almost half of those seeking work cannot find it. We need pathways from access, to skills, work, enterprise, ownership and ultimately dignity.

Government has laid important foundations. The Medium-Term Development Plan places inclusive growth, job creation, poverty reduction and a capable developmental state at the centre of our programme. Public employment, cooperative development, enterprise support, development finance, procurement reform and the District Development Model provide components for a stronger SSE ecosystem.

The Presidential Employment Stimulus has created more than 2.5 million work and livelihood opportunities, mostly for young people and women.

The Social Employment Fund has demonstrated that communities can undertake necessary work in food security, early-childhood development, community safety and public spaces.

These interventions provide income, experience and a foothold in the world of work. We must now build pathways from social employment into accredited skills, permanent work, cooperative ownership, community enterprise and sustainable contracts. A foothold should become a bridge.

Our communities have never waited for perfect conditions. They have built stokvels, food gardens, community kitchens, early-childhood development centres, recycling networks and responses to gender-based violence. Women have carried much of our care infrastructure. Young people and persons with disabilities have innovated in environments never designed with them in mind.

Not all these activities are SSE enterprises, but they show that South Africa does not lack solidarity, ingenuity or socially necessary work. Our recognition of this resilience must be matched by support, investment and markets. Resilience is evidence of capacity and should become a foundation for economic agency.

This brings us to the Missing Middle. Conventionally, it is described as a financing gap between micro-grants and commercial lending. That is true, but incomplete.

Consider a women-led community enterprise providing food, care or recycling services. It has experience, trust and demand, but may lack collateral, audited statements or tendering capacity. One contract is too large to contest alone; delayed payment on another can destroy its cash flow. It remains caught between a short-term grant and a market it cannot enter.

This is the next frontier of institutional alignment. A recent assessment identified 117 public MSME-financing mechanisms administered by 26 institutions. We have a substantial foundation; the task is to simplify navigation, diversify instruments and connect finance to capability and markets.

The Missing Middle is not one missing pot of money. It is the missing bridge from informality to appropriate recognition; from grants to patient capital; from enterprise support to reliable demand; from temporary work to sustainable livelihoods; and from small local organisations to participation in wider value chains.

International experience offers lessons, provided we adapt rather than copy. Québec shows that capital can be patient. Italy shows that social cooperatives can share services and bid collectively. Scotland uses procurement and anchor institutions to retain wealth locally. Korea connects recognition, training, finance and markets, while warning that excessive bureaucracy can weaken community autonomy.

The District Development Model provides an existing platform through which these lessons can be localised. Rather than create a parallel system, we should place SSE within District One Plans and emerging Area Compacts, aligning all spheres around the needs and productive strengths of each place.

Every district should map its cooperatives, mutuals and community enterprises, together with local needs, growth drivers, infrastructure constraints, procurement pipelines and potential value chains. An agricultural district requires a different ecosystem from a mining region or metropolitan digital economy. The aim is to connect state capability with each place’s comparative advantages and aspirations.

Schools, hospitals, colleges, municipalities, public entities and local companies all purchase goods and services. Their collective demand can create predictable markets in food, care, maintenance, recycling, energy, textiles and technology.

The DDM also enables federated scale. Enterprises across municipalities can form consortia, share compliance, technology, equipment and tendering capacity, and aggregate supply while retaining local ownership.

The One Plans should not mean one actor or one institutional voice. It should mean one shared development compact in which government, communities, labour, business and social-economy organisations contribute through different forms of ownership towards common outcomes.

This architecture requires accessible, graduated SSE recognition that opens doors without imposing identical burdens on emerging and established institutions. It also requires patient capital, guarantees and working-capital facilities that understand collective ownership.

We must use public purchasing strategically: unbundle appropriate contracts, prepare enterprises before tenders are advertised, recognise measurable social value and enforce payment discipline. A viable enterprise cannot wait indefinitely for completed work.

And we must measure what matters. Public support should be connected to decent work, democratic governance, accessibility, reinvestment, environmental responsibility and genuine community benefit. SSE must be protected against corruption, patronage and social-impact washing precisely because its credibility is a public asset.

For the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, radical inclusion cannot mean counting people after the important decisions have already been taken. It means changing who owns, who governs and who benefits from the planning phase.

Women must not enter SSE merely because they already carry society’s care responsibilities. They must own enterprises and assets and be compensated fairly for care. Young people must design sectors, build platforms and govern institutions. Persons with disabilities must be recognised as workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, investors and decision-makers.

Our Constitution is itself intersectional. It recognises overlapping systems of race, class, gender, disability, age, sexuality and geography. An Ubuntu that excludes women in their diversity, persons with disabilities, LGBTI persons or migrants has been emptied of its ethical meaning.

This work must also be pan-African. The African Union’s Ten-Year SSE Strategy connects the social and solidarity economy to decent work, social protection, food security, affordable finance and the empowerment of women, youth and persons with disabilities. Through the African Continental Free Trade Area, locally rooted enterprises should enter cross-border value chains in agro-processing, renewable energy, recycling, care, cultural production and digital services.

Africa must not treat SSE as a small social-policy programme at the margins of the real economy. It can contribute to our strategy for industrialisation, food sovereignty, a just transition and shared economic self-determination. Our proposition should be local roots, district-based capacity and continental reach.

As we move towards the Johannesburg Declaration and a National Advisory Committee, success should be measured by the implementation pathway we create. The Declaration should say how the sector will be recognised, financed, connected to markets, rooted in districts and measured.

The Advisory Committee should become an engine of co-construction, coordination and implementation, with an agreed work plan, assigned responsibilities and measurable outcomes. Women, youth, persons with disabilities, workers and community practitioners must participate not as invited guests, but as co-authors of the system. Programme Director, solidarity helped African communities to survive.

The women of 1956 and the youth of 1976 turned solidarity into organised resistance. Our Constitution transformed those accumulated struggles into a democratic promise that every person has equal dignity and that the divisions inherited from our past must be overcome.

Thirty years into constitutional democracy, our responsibility is not only to defend that promise as law. It is to build the institutions, capabilities and economic relationships through which it can be experienced in people’s everyday lives.

We do not begin from zero. Government and society have laid important foundations. Our task is to connect them, strengthen them and carry them forward with greater coordination and purpose: from community resilience to community power, from temporary opportunity to durable livelihood, from local enterprise to federated capacity, and from constitutional promise to shared prosperity.

Let us build an economy in which dignity is reflected in the quality of work, equality in the distribution of opportunity, freedom in the ability to exercise economic agency, and democracy in the power people have over the institutions that shape their lives.

Our task is to build an economy capable of carrying the full weight of our Constitution’s promise.

I thank you.

#GovZAUpdates

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.