President Zuma says rising unemployment and poverty among blacks must be urgently handled.
South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma on Tuesday June 26, 2012 called for a major policy shift, saying the compromises that were made in the 1990s during negotiations that led to the transition from apartheid to democracy had not dealt away with social inequalities, the Sowetan newspaper reported.
He acknowledged that his party has since 1994 failed to significantly transform the economy in favour of poor black people. Speaking at the opening of a four-day national policy conference of the ruling African National Congress party in Johannesburg, Zuma admitted that the structure of the apartheid economy had remained largely intact, Business Day newspaper said. Addressing thousands of delegates to the conference that is holding before the next presidential election in 2014, the President pointed out that the ownership of the economy was still primarily in the hands of white males as it has always been.
Zuma lauded the significant progress made by the government since 1994, citing the millions of low cost houses that have been built as well as the provision of water and electricity, but said more needed to be done. In spite of the achievements, he said the time had come for the party to do something drastic to improve the situation. The President noted that there was need to get back to the basics and take the difficult decisions that could not be taken in 1994.
President Jacob Zuma also warned that the party was being damaged by certain tendencies such as corruption, the social distance between leaders and their supporters and problems with the interface between the ANC and the State.
Observers say from his public pronouncements, it is clear that Zuma wants to clean up the ANC but has set for himself a Herculean task. First, the tendencies he decried are entrenched in the ANC. Secondly, his lament over the state of the party is a restatement of what the then ANC Secretary General, Kgalema Motlanthe said when he presented his organisational report to the Polokwane party conference in 2007.
