THE ANC WILL NOT DISAPPOINT THE PEOPLE

By Thabo Mbeki and - - Reprint | | Print |

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PRETORIA, Mar 31 2004 (IPS) - The people of South Africa recently voted overwhelmingly for national unity and reconciliation by renewing the mandate of the African National Congress, writes Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa. In this article, Mbeki writes that South Africans rejected the ANC\’s opponents\’ assertion that the country\’s challenges could only be met if the people separated into antagonistic camps, defined by race, colour, and ethnicity. They also rejected the claim that the same movement that has led and leads them in the struggle to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment is the cause of the poverty and underdevelopment they continue to experience. Today we must work together in a people\’s contract to take our country further forward towards the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This will include the creation of more jobs and the reduction of poverty, the building of a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa with sustained reduction of the racial and gender disparities that continue to disfigure our country, and the reinforcement of national unity and reconciliation.

The people of South Africa recently voted overwhelmingly for national unity and reconciliation by renewing the mandate of the African National Congress (ANC). They thus voted to unite in action in a people’s contract, to create jobs, to fight poverty, and build a better life for all, together.

In celebration of our First Decade of Liberation, the majority of South Africans voted against the perpetuation of the racial and ethnic divisions of the past and repudiated attempts to persuade them that they belong to separate compartments, with competing interests.

Our country’s central challenge during its First Decade of Democracy was the eradication of the 350-year-old legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This entailed and entails all aspects of human activity, the political, economic, social, and cultural. To eradicate this legacy we had to break with our past by, among other things:

-ensuring that our people live and work together without tension and conflict, regardless of our racial, colour, ethnic and religious diversity, with each guaranteed his or her human dignity;

-securing the territorial cohesion of our country as one united entity, with everybody entitled to work and live anywhere within our borders;

-translating our democratic victory into a properly functioning democracy that promotes equality for all and enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority, if not all our people;

-rescuing our economy from an endemic and worsening crisis of permanent stagnation, depression, and regression;

-restructuring the economy so that it achieves sustained growth, becomes internationally competitive, and generates the resources to address the needs of all our people;

-changing the state machinery so that it works to advance the political, economic and social developmental interests of all our people;

-eradicating poverty and underdevelopment, and closing the racial and gender disparities in wealth, income and opportunity; and

-normalising the relations between our country and the rest of Africa and the world, regaining our place among the community of nations as a force for peace, democracy, mutually advantageous cooperation and development for all.

Our political opponents deliberately underplayed our country’s achievements in all these areas. They attempted to make the people oblivious to the sustained effort this work has required and to the advances we have made. They did their best to persuade the people to forget the ugly reality of the apartheid society from which we have been working to escape over the last 10 years.

As part of this effort, the opposition constantly argued that to refer to the continuing impact of the apartheid legacy is to ”play the race card”. By trying to obliterate the memory of our racist past and denying its sustained impact on the present and the future, they seek to attribute to the ANC and the democratic order all the problems we have inherited from the past. Unashamedly, they pretend that these problems that are many centuries old could have been solved in a mere 10 years, and that failure to solve them constitutes an avoidable failure of our movement.

But South Africans firmly rebuffed these desperate efforts to mislead them because their own experience has taught them the truth that some sought to deny. The long and arduous history of political struggle left them well prepared to distinguish illusion from reality.

The poor of our country, the millions of working people and the unemployed, constitute the bedrock of the support of the ANC. They carried the democratic struggle on their shoulders, ensuring that they became their own liberators. At the same time, they bore the brunt of the poverty, the deprivation and suffering imposed on our people by the brutal system of colonialism and apartheid.

Because of this supremely painful experience, these masses, more than any other section of our population, had the greatest and most intense interest in the victory of the democratic revolution. They became the most steadfast and principled members and supporters of the ANC, because this was the movement that constantly stood at the head of the people in struggle, uncompromising in its search for freedom and determined never to be terrorised or bribed into betraying their aspirations.

The masses have rejected the assertion that the country’s challenges could only be met if the people separated into antagonistic camps, defined by race, colour, and ethnicity. They have refused to accept the claim that the same movement that has led and leads them in the struggle to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment is the cause of the poverty and underdevelopment they continue to experience.

Today we will and must work together in a people’s contract to take our country further forward towards the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This will include the creation of more jobs and the reduction of poverty, the building of a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa with sustained reduction of the racial and gender disparities that continue to disfigure our country, the reinforcement of national unity and reconciliation, the further extension of the frontiers of knowledge and culture, a heightened contribution to the victory of the African Renaissance and the emergence of a just world. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)