We must keep our eyes on the prize of implementing far-reaching, radical socio-economic transformation

The NEC Lekgotla held in June 2014, convened immediately after the 2014 general elections, set the tone for the fifth administration. The overarching theme coming out of that Lekgotla was that Government should move with speed to implement our electoral commitments as means of addressing the needs of our people.

We emerged out of the NEC meeting and the Lekgotla of June 2014 with a clear directive that words without action do not have a place in this term of office. Every cadre of our movement, in the NEC subcommittees and the different spheres of our Government, would give content and provide a programme to our commitment for radical economic and social transformation, as resolved by the 53rd National Conference.

Drawing from our elections campaign and what our communities said were their needs, and also weaknesses of our public representatives at this level, we resolved to be ever present among our people and to urgently meet the identified needs. It is in this regard that greater emphasis was placed on Local Government. Institutions of state, in particular the State Owned Enterprises and Development Finance Institutions, were urged to be effective instruments of change.

It was made clear to all of us that service to the people should be a norm, not an exception. Our people expect to be served with distinction, and we must do so as a matter of course and not merely as an electoral act. All ANC structures were impressed upon to drive implementation. From the officials through to the branch, the challenge would be to monitor our cadres and their ability to implement, and with speed.

OUR PRIORITIES AND THEIR CONTEXT

The priorities which were set for our Government arose, mainly, from the Election Manifesto and the National Development Plan. They were outlined as follows:

1. Creating more jobs, decent work and sustainable livelihoods

2. Access to education

3. Access to health

4. Rural development, land and agrarian reform

5. Fighting crime and corruption

These priorities, given their long-term impact, were carried forth from the previous term because we deemed that they require concerted effort and specific attention. In addition to these we included Local Government, with focus on governance and service delivery as aspects that constitute points of vulnerability for the ANC.

Furthermore, we identified four catalyst sectors, that is:

1. Energy infrastructure

2. Transport infrastructure

3. ICT and

4. Water and sanitation

It was also agreed that sport and recreation, social cohesion and nation-building were critical for creating national pride and preserving our history and heritage.

As a movement the question we must confront is: Have the Ministries and Departments adequately dealt with these priorities, by implementing action plans with the required urgency and by allocating the necessary resources? We should all answer this question openly and honestly. By so doing, we will be enabling our Government make headway even in areas where we are experiencing difficulty.

WHAT WE COMMITTED TO

Economy

3.1 We made concrete commitments in concert with our rallying call for a radical economic transformation. Specifically, we stated that:

We should strive to achieve a 5% economic growth.

Economic growth should translate into increased employment and the reduction of inequality.

The de-racialisation of the economy should be accelerated.

We should step-up the implementation of the infrastructure project and crowd-in productive private sector investment.

State-owned companies should play a key role in driving the build programme.

Electricity shortage is a binding constraint, which limits growth and deters investment, and should be addressed urgently. In this context, the Medupi and Kusile power stations should be urgently brought into the generation stream. Also, considering the ageing generation infrastructure there is an immediate need to plan additional generation capacity. We, therefore, note the reminder that electricity shortage and load-shedding have been a reality since 2008. However, such a call is not useful when concrete solutions are not provided.

We have committed to pursue an energy mix approach, that is, take a holistic outlook integrating coal, nuclear, shale gas, off-shore oil and gas and renewable. What progress is being made on any of these? What is our response to the public outrage, which is sometimes politically motivated and other times raising alarm about corruption, against nuclear?

We will facilitate and support the development of specific sectors, through improving the performance of manufacturing and developing concrete plans to improve mining and agriculture

Supporting smallholder farmers and expanding the number of producers in agriculture

Increasing support for exploration and development in mining

Addressing obstacles to the programme of beneficiation of our minerals

Strengthening the state-owned mining company and consolidating state interests in mining

Focus on the development and growth of the small business sector. We have established a Ministry to focus on this area of work. However, is there tangible and visible work to develop and grow small businesses? What are the obstacles and challenges we face in establishing the necessary infrastructure in this new ministry?

We will increase private sector investment, including provision of specific incentives and engaging the private sector.

We will remove unnecessary regulatory burdens and reduce the risk of unintended consequences emanating from legislation and regulations. Areas that required urgent attention were developed and outlined as follows:

Building licences

Company registration

Tax compliance

Work permits for scarce skills

Mining licences

Water licences and access to municipal infrastructure services

Access to finance

Reduction of workplace conflict, investigate both the modality of collective bargaining in all sectors and the introduction of the national minimum wage.

On Education

We committed ourselves as follows:

To improve the quality of teaching and learning

To have regular annual national assessments to track improvements and lack thereof

To improve Grade R and extend Early Childhood Development

To improved the provision of infrastructure and learning material

To expand access to higher education institutions

To accelerate the building programme for the new universities

To link/integrate the various parts of the training system

To improve scholar transport in terms of availability, efficiency and safety

To centralise negotiations for procurement and contracts for books and furniture

To source and increase funding for Master's and Doctoral students

To take concrete steps towards free education up to the first degree. While striving to achieve this noble objective NSFAS must be improved to target students from poor households. This will require closure of loopholes, including corruption, which are used to access NSFAS for students who do not deserve assistance.

To develop funding for the gap market

To discuss the decline in the matriculation results and the impact of regular changes on the performance of the child

We should also recognise that each time a dilapidated school building appears in the media, for example, the schools destroyed by hail storms and left unattended for a long period; it impacts on the image of the ANC. From such images, the ANC is perceived to not prioritise education. Some of these examples are used to undermine progress we make in various areas of education.

Health

We committed to:

Improve human resources for health, particularly its management and leadership

Re-engineer primary healthcare

Improve health facility planning and infrastructure development and maintenance

Reduce healthcare costs

Continue to improve prevention and management of HIV & AIDS and TB.

Reduce maternal, infant and child mortality

Start the implementation of NHI to ensure universal health coverage

Crime and corruption

In the area of fighting crime and corruption the following commitments were made:

Prohibit public servants and public representatives from doing business with the State to limit and, ultimately, eliminate conflict of interest.

Improve the State' capacity to investigate, prosecute and convict those charged with corruption.

Strengthen anti-corruption legislation to provide stiffer penalties and strengthen the protection of whistle-blowers.

Improve management control and operations systems to prevent corruption.

Ensure that all the people of South Africa are and feel safe.

Enhance the capacity of the courts to eliminate backlogs and increase conviction rate.

Increase support for the police.

Intensify the fight against the abuse of women, children, elderly and people with disabilities.

Create the border management agency by 2016 and the international migration review.

Finalise the white paper on safety and security.

Finalise the Defence Review Strategic policy.

Finalise and implement a Single Police Service.

Rural development, Land and Agrarian reform

There was little attention paid to this priority at the June 2014 Lekgotla. The commitment to expand employment in agriculture was not supported by a clear programme. There was a lacklustre attempt to answer how emphasising the expansion of smallholder production could do this. There was also a commitment to grow sustainable rural enterprises and industries, increase agro-processing, trade development, and access to local markets and financial services.

We have now concentrated our focus on accelerating land reform and the land redistribution programme. The commitment in the January 08th statement that the expropriation legislation will be promulgated in 2015 should be supported with a concrete programme. The Ministry must give more details on the challenges faced in trying to implement the programme. The decision we have no are intended to step up land redistribution. Our preoccupation must be that:

Existing programmes directed at improving production among smallholder farmers should be appropriately funded and be properly managed to improve efficiencies.

Presently, agriculture only contributes about 2% to the GDP when it has the potential to contribute up to about 12%. What can be done concretely to tap this potential? Is Onderste Poort Research Institution appropriately located in the Department of Agriculture, or should it be in Science and Technology? The impact of its underperformance in our failure to progress fast enough towards achieving the targets must be assessed.

Local Government

We committed that national departments must support weak municipalities directly. We said we would continue to:

Implement free basic services for indigent households and to support municipalities where they lack capacity

Guide municipalities to ensure compliance with legislative requirements in respect of municipal revenue, financial management and sustainability.

Ensure infrastructure grants are utilised optimally and used for their intended purpose

Deal with the prevalence of corruption

Include the Back to Basics document to our commitments

Connect and interact with communities, reporting back regularly and ensuring public participation

Eradicate the culture of entitlement in our communities

Ensure that local government is responsive, accountable, effective and efficient

Provide support to poor municipalities so they are able to implement infrastructure capital and maintenance plans

On the State

In addition to commitments made in the area of local government we further committed ourselves to:

Work on improving the capacity of the state

Building a public service that is disciplined, people-centred and professional

Ongoing training in the workplace and targeted training by the School of Government

Attract and retain skills

Professionalise and modernise procurement to improve value for money and reduce risk

Smarter use of technology to improve efficiency

Increase access to houses and basic services

Focus more on building infrastructure with any housing project

Move away from apartheid spatial planning patterns

We will shortly release the detailed resolutions of the ANC January Lekgotla which dealt with these questions and developed concrete programmes in response to the challenges identified.

That Lekgotla sought to:

Ensure that it was diagnostic in its approach and deliberations

It focused on implementation or lack thereof

Understand sector programmes, progress reports and plans for each sector to contribute to us achieving the 5% growth by 2019

Be specific and bold in dealing with electricity crisis that is facing our country

Be more concrete, with clear timeframes, regarding exploiting the potential of the energy sector. Moving with speed was empathised as being critical in this regard.

Ministries working in the catalytic sectors as identified must help us develop concrete programmes. The June 2014 Lekgotla made little reference to the areas of ICT and water and sanitation, which stands in contrast to the bold commitment made in the infrastructure rollout programme.

Develop concrete responses to current and immediate challenges:

Electricity load shedding

The conflict in the small business sector (xenophobia or scramble for scarce resources and opportunities)

Digital migration

Chaos in boards of State Owned Companies

Strengthening the Back to Basic document on local government. It should be concrete in addressing corruption, real and perceived, as this remains one of the biggest challenges facing our country

CONCLUSION

The commitments we made in both the June 2014 and January 2015 Lekgotla, should find expression in practical and concrete actions. They are devoid of value and meaning if they only remain on paper. In fact, if anything at all, they reflect negatively on the ANC and its Government in that they communicate that we are unable to implement even those issues we agree on and commit to.

>> Comrade Gwede Mantashe is the Secretary General of the ANC.

This article first appeared in ANC Today, the online newsletter of the African National Congress.

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