Quote

It's a big problem in South Africa up to this day: many people want to open factories, they want to invest, but then they discover that they don't have the skilled people to employ.

Thabo Mbeki

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thabo Mbeki
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: June 18
Economist
Politician
South African Politician
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
Problem
Employ
Many
Factories
People
Invest
Africa
Discover
South
Open
Bigs
Skilled

More quotes by Thabo Mbeki

Image
The principal investors in the South African economy are South Africans. And this is something, I think, we should really pay attention to.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
The concern around probable questions, which in a sense have been hidden, will grow around the world and the matter is critical, the reason we are doing all this is so we can respond correctly to what is reported to be a major catastrophe on the African continent.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
We can't treat the matter of black economic empowerment as just the redistribution of existing wealth. It really has to focus on new investment, on growth, on development of employment and so on and so on.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
How many murders are committed in Gauteng, or in the Western Cape, in a month? A week? A day? An hour? But of course we are not allowed to know for sure. In close and direct imitation of his apartheid models, Selebi ensures that no statistics about crime may be published regularly in the press.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
I don't suppose I would describe myself as a showman.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
I must say also, that we are not talking just about foreign investors.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
That is one of the reasons why we have raised this matter about the need to focus quite sharply on the function of local government, but also on the resourcing of local government. Because it may very well be that we say to local government, you have got to run an indigent policy.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
Does HIV cause AIDS? Can a virus cause a syndrome? How? It can't, because a syndrome is a group of diseases resulting from acquired immune deficiency.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
There is a land problem in Zimbabwe, there is a need land for redistribution but it must be handled different, without violence, without conflict, within the context of the law, bearing in mind the interests of all Zimbabweans both black and white. It's necessary that the Zimbabwean government to respond positively to those sorts of messages.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
Сertainly to the extent that we talk about not just procurement in the sense of acquiring goods from the rest of the economy, even to the extent that it is possible to bring Black players in areas where we say we need to raise the capacity of these organisations to deliver services, it is a very important part.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
If we don't move forward with regard to creating a non-racial society in South Africa and we allow this legacy of apartheid to persist, these divisions between black and white in wealth and income and so on, in the future you would indeed have an ugly upheaval.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
For instance with regard to tourism, that we should be able to target people who are interested in investing in the tourism sector and explain that this is the size of the market, these are the incentives in this particular area, this is the capacity, this is what is needed.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
We differ with the Israeli Government about a number of things, and they know that. In the past, I have discussed with Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon these issues. The fact that we differ about something or the other shouldn't be a matter of strain.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
For an investor who is sitting in the United States, and South Africa is very far from the United States, you need to go out to that investor to say, these are the possibilities in this particular sector.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
Our troops are in Burundi. We were requested by African countries who said, look, the United Nations is not moving on this matter, can you people deploy people, so we can move Burundi forward.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
South Africa was to evolve into the most pernicious example of the criminal practise of colonial and white minority domination.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
Those communal areas have got elected municipalities, which have got to do their work as, as fully, democratically elected municipal councils.
Thabo Mbeki
Image
I think anybody who knows anything about South Africa and the South African economy would know that one of the big constraints to growth and development is skills shortages. So all of us, need to come at this thing as vigorously as is possible and, of course, the private sector has the capacity to take it on board.
Thabo Mbeki