South Africa needs to focus on its ”greatest asset”, the youth, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Wednesday.
Manuel was addressing young black professionals at the Sandton Convention Centre.
”It’s about ensuring that the people who will be absorbed in the economy have the skills … because part of what we have to do is to understand what is happening in the world and if we don’t focus on our greatest asset, young people, and ensure that they are skilled and absorbed into the economy … if we don’t do those kinds of things then what we see now in this global economic crisis would suck us in and destroy our vision, destroy our future,” Manuel said.
Manuel, a member of the African National Congress’s (ANC) national executive committee, was accompanied by ANC head of elections, Fikile Mbalula.
Manuel said the ANC’s election manifesto was a plan of action for the ANC’s next term and not merely empty promises.
Manuel said the party was ”confident” that the ANC would return to power after the April 22 poll.
He urged the youth to cross their ballots and told them the ANC would not take their vote for granted.
Voting would be the beginning of ”a different kind of relationship” between the party and the people, he said, emphasising the party’s election slogan: ”together we can do more”.
Manuel spoke on a range of issues including corruption, food security, Zimbabwe and HIV/Aids.
He said the problem in the battle against HIV/Aids was that government was not getting people to change their behaviour.
”We must approach this issue with a great deal of humility and look at people like yourselves and say ‘how do we do it’ because clearly the pitch of what we are doing is wrong.”
The audience asked Manuel various questions on a range if issues including whether the party’s economic policy would be shifting to the left under the new dispensation.
All the ANC policies were centred on the Freedom Charter, putting the people at its core. Central to all the party’s policies were ways of addressing poverty and it was irrelevant whether it was left or right, said Manuel. — Sapa