/ 10 January 2009

ANC moves left in election pledge

The ANC vowed on Saturday to create jobs, improve education and health and fight crime in a shift to the left at the launch of its manifesto.

The ANC vowed on Saturday to create jobs, improve education and health and fight crime in a shift to the left at the launch of its manifesto before this year’s parliamentary election.

Party leader Jacob Zuma told thousands of supporters in East London that the ANC manifesto would focus on five areas: job creation, health, education, food security and rural development, and fighting corruption and crime.

”The creation of decent work is at the centre of all our economic policies. We will put in place a comprehensive state-led industrial policy that will direct public and private investment to support employment creation and broader economic transformation,” he said.

The pledge to involve more government intervention to fight poverty and secure jobs has been welcomed by the ANC’s leftist allies — the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

”The SACP supports the ANC manifesto …. [because] it commits the ANC government to develop an industrial strategy that focuses on energy and food sovereignty and security, on jobs and not profits as the key priority,” the party said in a statement.

But investors fear the left might pressure an ANC government to ditch policies that helped spur nearly a decade of growth in Africa’s biggest economy.

The ANC has ruled South Africa with a large majority since the end of apartheid in 1994, but is facing a challenge from the Congress of the People (Cope), a party of loyalists to former President Thabo Mbeki that broke away from the ANC last year.

Cope, led by former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota, has not released its election programme, but it has signalled that it will adopt centrist, pro-business policies similar to those pursued by Mbeki during his nine years in office.

Although Cope would be hard pressed to defeat the ANC, the new party could gain enough black votes to deny it an absolute parliamentary majority at the election due in around April.

Zuma said the ANC would work towards introducing a free education for the poor at undergraduate level, would fight illiteracy and invest in improving the quality of schooling.

He also said the ANC would try to introduce a national health insurance scheme, to be phased in over five years, and would invest in information and prevention to halve the rate of new HIV/Aids infections.

Zuma said his party would step up measures to fight corruption and transform the criminal justice system.

A South African court will hand down a judgement on Monday on an appeal by prosecutors against a decision to throw out bribery, fraud and other charges against Zuma.

Re-opening the case could hurt the ANC president’s image and almost certainly overlap with his campaign for the presidency.

‘Our people have spoken clearly’
”We will review the national student financial aid scheme to facilitate the progressive introduction of free education for the poor at undergraduate level,” Zuma said.

On crime, Zuma reiterated the ANC’s objective of reducing contact crime by 7% to 10% per year.

However, Zuma said the ANC’s pro-poor manifesto did not imply that the ANC was turning a blind eye to achievements registered under Mbeki’s government.

The ANC government, Zuma said, provided 18,7-million more people with access to clean water and 10,9 million more people with sanitation.

Close to 10-million houses were built for the poor.

Yet, it was clear that a lot more still needed to be done.

”We will retain those strategies and practices that have been successful, but will change or improve those that have not delivered optimal results,” he

The ANC will see to it that state owned enterprises (SOEs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) played a major role in uplifting South Africans still trapped in poverty.

”Our people have spoken clearly — they say that development finance institutions DFIs are not easily accessible and that they often seem to be competing with commercial banks,” Zuma said.

The party’s black economic empowerment and affirmative action policies, which has so far contributed to the growth of South Africa’s middle class by 2,6-million in 2007, would be retained.

”We will continue to advance these progressive policies,” Zuma said. – Reuters, AFP