The urban unrest over services delivery in South African towns shows fault lines that, if exploited, could generate conflict the country does not need, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday.
Addressing the National Assembly at the start of debate on the president’s Budget vote — in which the president strongly advocated more powerful state intervention in the daily running of the country — he said there is nothing to suggest South Africa is threatened by the ”centrifugal tensions” that have caused the collapse of states elsewhere in Africa.
”However, this should not serve as cause for complacency,” Mbeki said. ”There are various matters that arise as part of our daily reality, which indicate the fault lines that can emerge and generate conflicts that we do not need.”
Among them are ”the few demonstrations we have seen in some of our municipalities, apparently driven by feelings among some of the poor that so far, the democratic order has failed them”.
There is also the political mobilisation based on the assertion that Afrikaner people are being denied their identity and rights, and attempts to mobilise the Zulu people ”on the false basis that they share so-called national interests different from the interests of other South Africans”.
”We can say with confidence that none of these instances present any immediate danger to our democracy.
”But they do reflect and seek to exploit the class and nationality fault lines we inherited from our past which, if ever they took root, gaining genuine popular support, would pose a threat to the stability of democratic South Africa.”
Mbeki said the poor and disempowered in the country require a strong state to redress the imbalances of power derived from the country’s history.
While recognising that the private sector in South Africa remains dominant, Mbeki said the democratic state holds enough power to play a ”catalytic and facilitating” role.
”Our developmental model therefore includes the fundamental proposition that we need a strong state to achieve … sustainable social and economic development,” he said.
He argued that given the serious developmental challenges confronting the country, the government has thought it necessary to undertake a critical assessment of the organisation and capacity of South Africa’s democratic state, which he said the Forum of Directors General has been tasked to do.
It is critical that state institutions should not become disconnected from the people, he said.
”The people should not feel alienated from the very institutions of the democratic state, including this House, in which they have willingly placed their trust as the repositories of their aspirations,” he said.
While calling for more state intervention, Mbeki also recognised the need for a credible government and subtly chastised officials who have harboured the thought of corruption. — Sapa