The Pan Africanist Congress is to intensify campaigns for poverty eradication through the sharing of the country’s wealth ahead of the 2004 elections.
In his opening address of the party’s eighth elective national congress in Umtata on Saturday. PAC president Stanley Mogoba said the ravages of poverty on the poor and helpless had become more devastating with time.
The congress was being held under the banner ”Poverty eradication and food security”.
Mogoba said he had observed as early as 1997 that after Apartheid, South Africa’s greatest priority would be to teach the nation the ethic of sharing.
”This simple word is deeper than it sounds. If one uses the conventional word ”socialism,” people are switched on quickly even without much thought, and yet sharing carries the same meaning and even goes deeper to the roots of capitalist greed and insensitivity,” he said.
South Africans were being challenged to share land in a vast country larger than many states of Europe, he said.
”How can we go to sleep in our cosy beds and spacious houses when we know that some people — fellow countrymen and women — have to sleep in small enclosures covered with wood, pieces of iron, plastic and paper?”
Mogoba said that if all the money spent on security, including the R43-billion arms deal, was spent on job creation and training for jobs and helping people to acquire homes, have a share of the land to produce food using their own hands and brains, the country would be on the road to a promising future.
The PAC’s plans of calling a land summit were at a fairly advanced stage, he said. The party’s land summit committee would be reporting during the congress, Mogoba added.
It was most ironic, he said, that while people were starving, political leaders were engaging in games of floor-crossing.
”Why do we waste so much money, time and energy merging with the Nationalist Party? Why not with PAC, UDM, Azapo, ACDP and UCDP. Why is winning the Western Cape so important to the ANC. How will this help the poor and the poorest of the poor?” Mogoba asked.
Mogoba said the recent bombings in Soweto by right-wing groupings showed the new democratic dispensation was under threat from white conservatives refusing to be part of South Africa.
”We are challenged as never before to unite as a nation to save this nation. We have rejected colour discrimination before and the whole world supported us. We must do so again (as) there is no room for colour or ethnic enclaves,” he said.
Nominations for the organisation’s new leadership were due on Saturday night, to be followed by elections on Sunday morning. The congress was scheduled to end on Monday. ‒ Sapa