Although there is a long way to go in creating a fully non-discriminatory and prosperous society, progress is being made and South Africans must embrace the challenges ahead with confidence, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
Expecting to eradicate a deeply entrenched 350-year-old legacy of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment in a very short time was entirely unrealistic, he said in his weekly newsletter on the ANC website.
Measuring the progress made towards creating a non-racial, non-sexist, equitable and prosperous society, some South Africans considered ”the glass is half-full, and others that it is half-empty”.
”Given the important challenges we continue to face, it is natural that all of us should continue to be driven by a sense of urgency in everything we do, inspired by the need further to accelerate our advance towards meeting the goal of a better life for all our people.”
At the same time, it should be recognised that some realities would continue to impact on everything being done, he said.
One of these was that South Africa was still a young democracy. Twelve years in the life of a nation as new as South Africa was very short indeed.
”Another of these realities is that we face the task to eradicate a deeply entrenched legacy of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment that was nearly 350 years old at the time we won our freedom in 1994.
”Despite this objective reality, many a time one gets the feeling that some in our country express views and act in a manner that is based on the entirely unrealistic expectation that the legacy of the catastrophic damage visited on our country and people over centuries can be eradicated in a very short time.”
Various moments this year had served to remind the nation that in reality it was not that far removed from the apartheid years, which marked both the apogee and the end of colonialism in the country and on the continent.
”I refer here specifically to the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Women’s March and the 30th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising. I refer also to the passing away a short time ago, on October 31, of one of the titans of the apartheid system, PW Botha.
”Inevitably, the matters to which I have just referred would have given many in our country the possibility to make a comparison between the situation then, and the situation now, which should in any case always be part of the armoury of measures we use to estimate whether the glass is half-full or half empty.”
Mbeki went on to quote apartheid-era finance minister Barend du Plessis outlining in 1986 to the then Parliament the dire economic circumstances facing the country as internal strife and world opinion against apartheid intensified.
He compared this to current Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s upbeat medium-term Budget policy statement to Parliament last month. Manuel outlined solid economic performance, including a marked decline in poverty and rising employment.
The radical divergence between these two pronouncements demonstrated that ”we have made a qualitative break with our past, sufficient for us proudly to affirm that we have left our Age of Despair behind us, and entered our Age of Hope.
”What remains for all of us to do, together, is to embrace the challenges ahead with confidence,” Mbeki said. — Sapa