South Africa’s ruling African National Congress cannot claim to have a well-managed economy in place although economic fundamentals on a macro-level have improved, says opposition Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille.
Reacting in a statement to the weekend ruling party’s election campaign launch in Pietermaritzburg, De Lille said the ANC cannot make the claim when 45% of the population survives on less than R600 a month ”and unemployment stands at over 40%, 70% of whom have never been employed”.
De Lille, who crossed the floor from the Pan Africanist Congress last year to form her new party, said she nevertheless welcomes the ANC’s ”belated decision” to invest in infrastructural development, ”but given their track record we question their ability to implement these grand plans”.
”The arbitrary figure of one million jobs [for the expanded public works programme] sounds more like a manifesto sales pitch than a well-researched forecast.”
De Lille, who has made the fighting of HIV/Aids a keystone of her political campaign, said the pandemic threatens ”all levels of our society. As usual, there is very little mention of how the ANC intends dealing with the effects of HIV/AIDS on the economy.
”This threat has been magnified due to the ANC’s mishandling of the issue and the government’s delays in rolling out an anti-retroviral programme.”
Meanwhile, official opposition Democratic Alliance rural safety spokesperson Paul Swart said in another reaction to the ANC’s manifesto that the party had done nothing to counter the ”widespread disillusionment of South Africa’s rural communities”.
”People living in rural areas have long believed — and after this weekend still believe — that they are on their own and that the government will not come to their rescue.
”While police resources in rural areas are being depleted, incidents of farm attacks have increased by at least 10% from 1997 to 2002 according to the committee of inquiry into farm attacks,” said Swart.
The solution to violent crimes in rural areas is a special rural safety division within the South African Police Service (SAPS), under the direct control of the national commissioner and with the final responsibility resting with the minister, he argued. Such a division would also have much better success at recruiting adequate numbers of reservists to assist than the current sector-policing model.
He argued that there are too few police officers in rural areas.
”The government’s decision to phase out the commando units — one of the oldest and most effective military institutions in South Africa, which took part in just under 93 000 activities in support of the SAPS between 2001 and the middle of 2003 — has done little to help the situation.” — I-Net Bridge