The African National Congress (ANC) may have to scale down some of its development programmes due to the world financial crisis, South African Communist Party deputy general-secretary Jeremy Cronin warned on Wednesday.
”We need to shepherd public resources with discipline and care,” said Cronin, also a National Executive Committee member of the ANC.
During the Joe Slovo memorial lecture at the Hani Institute Cronin said the ANC has to be ”sustainable and intelligent” about what it is doing.
However, he said, there should be no compromise on the strategic direction which includes land and agrarian reform, health and creating jobs.
He said the country squandered the recent boom years. It did not take advantage of high commodity prices.
He said narrow black economic empowerment interests would be negatively impacted and this would affect company profits.
”We did not use the boom period to drive transformation in our productive economy. And we haven’t managed our economy well at all,” he said.
”Questions need to be asked now about what has gone wrong and what lessons can be learnt. There will not be any significant short-term recovery,” he said of the knock-on effects of the global crisis. — Sapa