A movement similar to that of the anti-apartheid movement was needed to make a success of South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday night.
Speaking at a dinner in Pretoria for companies that took part in the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa work-placement programme, Mbeki said it was time for the country’s leaders to come together to think of ways to address the common challenges in the country.
”This leadership of the people of South Africa, in all of its echelons, faces exactly the same challenge: To say what is it that we need to do together to make a success of the country,” he said.
He was referring to the anti-apartheid movement’s ability to unite people in a common cause.
”Why don’t we come together again to address what is common and national challenges?” the president added.
He recalled the years in the run-up to South Africa’s 1990 multiparty talks, saying various South African leaders started talking with the African National Congress in exile.
”In reality by the time formal negotiations started here in 1990, there was a common base as to what kind of South Africa we needed, what kind of South Africa shall we construct, a common view had developed amongst this broad leadership,” Mbeki said.
”What the leadership must do today is to repeat the process that happened from the mid-1980s which created the base for the agreement that was finally concluded.” – Sapa