ADDRESS BY ANC SECRETARY GENERAL GWEDE MANTASHE DELIVERED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM-LONDON, May 28 2010

SOUTH AFRICA SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER FREEDOM

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 nationalisation 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.

Issued by the African National Congress, May 28 2010

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