Date: 29/05/2010
Source: The African national Congress
Title: ANC: Mantashe: Address by the ANC secretary general, on South Africa 16 years after freedom, London

The Progressive Business Forum of the ANC is hosting our visit
to London this week. It is doing what it was set up to do in the first
place, that of ensuring that there is dynamic contact between business and
the ANC as the governing party in South Africa. In that process it is tasked
with ensuring that small and medium businesses get the necessary support for
them to succeed. This would be through their interaction with the relevant
support structures and linking them up with established business. In this
way we can develop a common vision for our country as the various sectors of
society. This can help us send out a coherent message to the country and the
world. This visit presents an opportunity for all of you to pose whatever
questions to the ANC and the ANC in the process will learn understand your
views better.

The ANC is oldest liberation movement in the continent that
came to power on the basis of the promise to build a united, non-racial,
non-sexist and democratic society. It is within the context of building a
non-racial society that the objective of this movement is to unite all the
people of South Africa with specific focus on blacks in general and Africans
in particular. The work we have been doing over the last sixteen years is
aimed at fulfilling this objective. In sixteen years we have increased
access to electricity from 39% in 1993 to 83% in 2010 of the population. A
developing economy in Africa over the same period has built 3,1 million
houses of which 2,7million have been given to the poor for free. 88% of our
people have access to clean drinking water including tap water in rural
villages. About 1600 new clinics have been built over the same period. 98%
of children between the ages of seven and fifteen are in school. Functional
illiteracy has been reduced from 14, 5% in 1996
to 8,8% of the population in
2009. In the election manifesto in 2009 we captured this perfectly when we
said that a lot has been done but a lot more needs to be done.

We made this
observation because we discovered that after fifteen years unemployment
remained stubbornly high, inequality in society continued to grow to a point
where we have overtaken countries like Brazil and India in terms of the Gini
Coefficient, making us one of the most unequal societies in the world.
Poverty continued to ravage our people and disease especially HIV and AIDS
pandemic continues to make our society sub-optimal in many ways. The five
priorities for the next five years were chosen, in the main, to confront
these preeminent problems facing society. These priorities are: -
· More
jobs, decent work and sustainable livelihood
· Education
· Health
· Rural
development and land reform and
· Fighting crime and corruption.

Having
adopted these priorities we had to deal with the global financial meltdown
with a direct impact of increasing unemployment in our country. This was a
crisis not of our own making because it was function of blowing the bubble
to a point of bursting driven by greed. It destroyed reputable companies in
the US and Europe, the most developed economies. As developing economies we
became victims and dealt with the consequences. We were caught in cross
fires. Our economy registered negative GDP growth for three quarters in
succession in 2009, taking South Africa through a recession officially. It
is heartening that we have registered positive GDP growth for two successive
quarters since then, 0,9% in the last quarter of 2009 and 3,2 % in the first
quarter of 2010. We are optimistic that this trend will continue into the
future.

Our national treasury have revised their growth projections from
2,3% to 2,5% for the year. The IMF is even more optimistic as they have
revised their own projections to 3,0%. The budget deficit remained contained
at about 7%. Trade deficit has been coming down although the volatility of
our currency makes the trade balance less predictable. The interest rate has
continued to come down, with the REPO rate is standing at 6,5% currently.
The inflation rate has remained outside of the 3% to 6% range for the better
part of the last two years. It is now within the range for two consecutive
months at 5,7% in February and 5,1% in March and the PPI is at 3,7%.

The
resilience of our banking sector in the face of the global financial crisis
has proven that our policies are sound, including the regulation of the
banking sector. The current focus on real economy, with the industrial
policy being at the centre of all the economic programmes is talking to the
unemployment problem. The economic growth path has identified ten sectors
that will receive serious attention because they have the potential to
create the much needed jobs: -
· Infrastructure.
· Green
economy.
· Agriculture and agro-processing.
· Manufacturing.
· Mining and
mineral beneficiation.
· Knowledge based sectors.
· Tourism and business
process services.
· Social economy and
· regional integration.

The
economic stability in our country and the clarity of policy must re-assure
investors that South Africa is a good investment destination. We need the
investment in productive economy if we will ever defeat unemployment and
poverty.

Politically the ANC and the country are stable. We have gone
through various tests over the past two and half years. It is only in South
Africa, in our continent that a party can recall a sitting president and two
provincial premiers and there be no ruction. The formation of a splinter
party by a group of dissident left the ANC with 65,9% support among the
voters. We increased the actual number of voters who supported us from
10,8million to 11,6million. Our government is not only functional but
effective. For the fist time we have set up the ministry responsible for
monitoring and evaluation in the presidency. That is why it was possible for
all the ministers to sign performance contracts with the president. This is
the clearest signal we can send that we want to do things differently and
execution is non-negotiable. The National Planning Commission is now in
place. We have established a dedicated Ministry for rural development and
land reform focusing on food production and food
security in these
economically depressed areas of our land. We have split the education
portfolio into basic education on the one hand and higher and further
education on the other. All these initiatives and others are aimed at
improving the effectiveness of our government. Early signs of improvement
are beginning to show.

In 2012 we are having two important milestones:
-
· The ANC will be celebrating its centenary.
· We will be holding the 53rd
national conference which is an elective conference.

Like any other
conference the ANC will review its policies and elect a leadership
collective. When we met the EU ambassadors last week they were worried about
two things that they claimed worry the investors: -
· The talk of the
so-called succession. We explained that electing the leadership in the ANC
is not conspiracy or plotting. It is a legitimate political activity that
must be allowed and branches of the ANC given space to discuss the question
of leadership.
· The second one is the question of nationlisation of the
mines. Again we explained that policy debate do take place in the

ANC
structures all the time people do not stop thinking. Every idea in the ANC
goes through a rigorous process before it can become policy. The idea of
nationalization of the mines as raised bu the ANCYL will have to go through
the ETC, the NGC and the policy conference before even reaching the National
Conference in 2012. The ANC has proven that it is a very practical and
pragmatic organisation that is why all its policies are balanced. This track
record must put investors at ease.

Our sport mad nation will be hosting the
FIFA soccer world cup knowing that apartheid South Africa was kicked out of
FIFA in 1967 we see this as part of celebrating our freedom. This is the
best way of honouring all our heroes, those who paid the ultimate price,
those who spent long years in apartheid jails, those who spent long years in
exile and those who confronted the enemy with stone at home for freedom. We
see this event as an honour for the whole of our continent, with South being
the stage and Africa being the theatre. We can feel it, it is
here.

Finally, it is important that South Africa will be hosting an all
South African super fourteen final in Soweto this weekend. What more can
complain about? We are determined to be a winning nation.