South African President Thabo Mbeki in his State of the Nation address to Parliament on Friday said that his government does not foresee making any policy changes.
Mbeki, whose African National Congress has more than a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly and has ruled since democracy in 1994, said: ”We do not foresee that there will be any need for new and major policy initiatives. The task we will all face during the decade ahead will be to ensure the vigorous implementation of these [existing] policies, to create the winning, people-centred society of which [former president] Nelson Mandela spoke.”
With an election for Parliament coming up — and Mbeki scheduled to make an announcement on the election date next week — he said: ”The work we will do must move our country forward decisively towards the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment in our country.”
While Mbeki has come under pressure internally and internationally over curiously dissident policies on how to handle the HIV/Aids pandemic and his as yet unsuccessful quiet diplomacy with troubled neighbouring Zimbabwe, his economic management has seen a measure of economic stability and reasonable economic growth.
”We must achieve further and visible advances with regard to the improvement of the quality of life of all our people, affecting many critical areas of social existence, including health, safety and security, moral regeneration, social cohesion, opening the doors of culture and education for all, and sport and recreation.”
”After 10 years after its liberation from minority rule our country still faces many challenges … our country’s blemishes could not be removed in one decade,” he said, but noted that significant progress has been made.
‘Real story’ of progress
Mbeki noted that the statistics tell the ”real story” of what has been achieved since 1994, such as 70% of houses being electrified, nine million having access to clean water and the successful formation of an integrated education system. Mbeki contrasted this to the situation before 1994, when the country experienced three years of negative growth and falling average income, and the overall wealth of the country declined by a third.
He noted that 10 years ago estimates of the housing backlog ranged from 1,4-million to three million units and the number of people living in shacks were between five million and 7,7-million. Now about 1,9-million housing subsidies have been provided and 1,6-million houses built for the poor.
In 1994 16-million South Africans had no access to clean water. Now nine million additional people have access to clean water. In 1994, 22-million people did not have adequate sanitations. Now 63% of households have sanitation.
In 1994 there were 17 fragmented departments of education and a disproportionate allocation of resources to white schools, but now there is an integrated education system, although more resources are needed in poor areas.
In 1994, when South Africa moved from the apartheid era, there had been 70% school enrolment. By 2002 secondary school enrolment reached 85%. In addition, nutrition and early childhood interventions had been established to improve results from children from poor backgrounds.
The challenges
Mbeki highlighted poverty, crime and the burden of diseases such as Aids as some of the many challenges facing the country.
He said: ”The burden of disease impacting [having an impact on] our people, including Aids, continues to be a matter of serious concern, as do issues that relate to the fact that many of our people, including the youth, lack the education and skills that our economy and society needs.”
Doctors protest
Meanwhile, outside Parliament, medical doctors and opposition MPs — including Independent Democrats (ID) leader Patricia de Lille — were protesting against legislation that they are arguing will set back the health sector.
It restricts doctors from practising in areas of their choice — subject to a register of needs.
The march has been organised to protest against the National Health Bill — dubbed the Certificate of Need Bill — which will give the government power to decide where doctors can operate in private practice and to curtail their medicine-dispensing activities.
The government’s vision is to discourage a concentration of doctors in a particular area.
Mbeki’s government recently opted to provide anti-retroviral drugs in state hospitals to HIV/Aids victims after years of public pressure from public health interest groups.
The economy
In his speech, Mbeki also called for a ”vigorous” implementation of the country’s current economic policies to address poverty and underdevelopment.
Mbeki did not call for any new approaches to South Africa’s macroeconomic policy, but said instead that now that the correct policies have been identified and agreed upon over the past years, more efficient and vigorous implementation is required.
”We already have the policies and programmes that will enable us to translate all the strategic objectives … we have already identified the challenges posed by the ‘second economy’, which economy constitutes the structural manifestation of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation in our country.
”We must therefore move vigorously to implement all the programmes on which we have agreed to ensure that we extricate all our people from the social conditions that spell loss of human dignity,” he stated.
These programmes include the urban renewal and rural development programmes, the expanded public works programme (which aims to employ one million people over 10 years), the expansion of micro-credit and small enterprises, the provision of adult basic education and modern skills, and the development of the social and economic infrastructure.
At the same time, the president said the government has to continue to focus on the growth, development and modernisation of the ”first economy” to generate the resources without which it would not be possible to confront the challenges of the second economy.
”This is going to require further and significant infrastructure investments, skills development, scientific and technological research, development and expansion of the knowledge economy, growth and modernisation of the manufacturing and service sectors, deeper penetration of the global markets by our products, increasing our savings levels, black economic empowerment and the further expansion of small and medium enterprises.”
Mbeki continued: ”We will have to focus on the implementation of the measures we have identified to ensure we achieve better value for the money spent on social delivery. Among other things, our successes with regard to both the first and second economies must create the conditions for us to reduce the numbers of our people dependent on social grants.”
This will further increase the resources available for social spending focused on investing in South Africa’s people, he noted.
He acknowledged that to be successful in these economic advances demand that the public sector discharges its responsibilities as a ”critical player” in the country’s growth, reconstruction and development.
”In particular, this will require that we further strengthen our system of local government and ensure that the system of traditional government plays the role ascribed to it in our Constitution and legislation.”
New world order
Mbeki argued for the building of a new world order that is more equitable and responsive to the needs of the poor of the world.
Mbeki said: ”All major current international developments emphasise the importance of constructing a new world order that is more equitable and responsive to the needs of the poor of the world, who constitute the overwhelming majority of humanity.”
Referring to the ”Iraq affair” — the United States-led invasion of Iraq — and the ”continuing and painful conflict involving Israel and Palestine, the World Trade Organisation failure at Cancun, the seeming paralysis around issues relating to the democratisation of the United National and other multilateral institutions, the dissonance between the process of globalisation and a multilateral system of governance [and] the issue of global terrorism”, Mbeki said all these matters underline the importance of ”moving forward significantly towards the building of the new world order that has been spoken of, for a long-time already”. — I-Net Bridge
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