Meeting the challenges of freedom

Today our country celebrates Freedom Day to mark the liberation of our country and people from a long period of colonialism and white minority domination.

As we do so, we commit ourselves to ensuring the defence of the sacred freedoms that we had won as a result of a long, difficult and costly struggle. We remind ourselves that the guarantee of these freedoms requires permanent vigilance.

One of these is the freedom of our people to govern.

The commitment to the defence of the freedom of the people to govern means that we are determined to ensure that our country never again experiences dictatorship in any form. It means that we must defend and further entrench the political system that is founded on the legal order contained in our Constitution.

Accordingly, the freedom of the people to govern is expressed through the democratic system that the overwhelming majority of our people value so highly, which means that we no longer have the situation in which political power is enjoyed and exercised by a minority of our population, to the exclusion of the majority.

It also means we have the duty to educate all our people that they have a responsibility actively to participate in the process of the governance of our country.

The ward committees provided for in our new system of local government represent a mechanism through which the masses of our people can and must effect such participation.

Various measures have also been instituted to ensure greater communication between the people and the government, giving the people greater possibilities to interact both with our legislatures as well as the executive authorities.

The freedoms we celebrate today include the freedom our country from corruption. Among other things, this means that we are committed to ensuring that nobody uses his or her positions on political or executive power to engage in corrupt acts that result in the diversion of public resources away from benefiting the people, into their own personal pockets.

This is important in itself. But it is also especially important in the light of the poverty that continues to afflict millions of our people. To these masses every cent counts as the means to take them out of the intolerable and dehumanising situation represented by poverty.

To advance the democratic project, we must do everything in our power to ensure that all our elected representatives maintain the closest possible contact with those who elected them to the responsible positions they occupy. This will ensure that these representatives are able to report to the people as well as expose themselves to the views of these masses, whose interests they have committed themselves to promote.

We should not have the situation according to which, as the people themselves have complained, some representative only interact with the people only at election time but are otherwise never seen or heard from once they are elected.

As a people, we must be truly proud of our great achievements in further entrenching democratic rule in the country, giving the opportunity and the possibility to every South African to participate in the process of determining the future of our country.

The last local government elections demonstrated how far we have progressed in this regard, as exemplified for the fact that violence and intimidation no longer play any part in influencing the decisions that the people take as they vote freely to choose their representatives.

On Freedom Day we also celebrate our victory over racial domination and discrimination. In this manner, we pledge ourselves to continue to work to wipe out the legacy of racism in our country.

This is a continuing task requiring that we end the social and economic disparities that continue to characterise and divide our society. We must also sustain the fight against ideas of racism that inform the discriminatory and other criminal behaviour on the part of some of our citizens.

These are some of the freedoms we celebrate and commit ourselves to defend as we observe our Freedom Day.

It is our privilege to mark this important day in our national calendar together with the people of the Northern Province.

This comes at the conclusion of a three-day visit to this Province, during which we have familiarised ourselves with the work being done to take forward the process of ensuring a better life for all our people.

At the same time, this Imbizo Visit has given us an opportunity to interact both with the ordinary people of the province as well as the leadership drawn from all sectors of society.

This visit has emphasised the importance of other freedoms for whose realisation we must continue to say that the struggle continues. These are such freedoms as the freedom from hunger, the freedom from disease, the freedom from ignorance and the freedom from fear.

Accordingly, the commitment we make as we observe Freedom Day, include the commitment to ensure that all our people enjoy these freedoms not merely as theoretical rights. They must inform the daily life experience of all our people as a fundamental feature, together with the political rights of which we have spoken, of the kind of society we are all working to create.

Together with the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, the Northern Province is one of the poorest areas in our country.

The visit to the Province has once more brought into sharp focus the difficult legacy we had inherited from the system of colonialism and apartheid. It has brought us face to face with levels of underdevelopment and poverty against which the public and private sectors and each one of us must combine to ensure that we achieve the common objective of the creation of a caring and people-centred society.

We visited areas of the Province in which the people have no land or no means to cultivate the land if it is available. This means that they are unable to earn a living from agriculture, in an area of our country which continues to have agriculture as one of the principal economic activities.

At the same time, in these areas, there are no alternative employment opportunities such as would be provided by economic ventures established by the private sector.

Unconfirmed reports were given that some young women in these areas deliberately fall pregnant so that, once their children are born, they can then access the Child Support Grant. This would then be the only income that would accrue to them.

Whether true or not, these reports underline the critical challenge our country faces to ensure that we conduct a sustained offensive against the scourge of poverty that continue to condemn millions of our people to a life of misery.

We also visited an important health centre in the Province - Jane Furse Hospital. Originally constructed in 1921, it is clear that this hospital should be transferred to new buildings currently under construction nearby.

Its state of dilapidation, break down of equipment, limitations in the provision of some services and restricted number of beds, stands in sharp contrast to the major health facilities in some of our urban areas and other new ones built since 1994, that are well equipped and run and are able to achieve proper health delivery especially to the poor people of our country.

Reports were given of clinics that have no piped clean water, no electricity and no access roads, which limits access by ambulances and other vehicles and creates enormous problems for the kind of dedicated health workers that we met at Jane Furse Hospital.

These included doctors from Cuba who are also helping to render invaluable service to our people.

Other reports were given of children still having to attend classes sitting under trees because of the shortage of classrooms in some areas.

We also visited a school that achieved excellent matriculation results last year. Yet this school, like many others in the Province, has no science laboratories and no science teachers, no electricity, no clean water, and so on.

Our presence in the Province also gave us an opportunity to convey our condolences to the mother and the rest of the family of the late Tshepo Matloga who was brutally murdered earlier this year, for which murder some people have been arrested and charged. We are confident that justice will be done as the law takes its due course.

This murder, and other recent acts of racist violence in the Province, had clearly heightened fears of intensified racist violence in the Province, adding to the concern of the people against ordinary criminal violence in a province that describes itself as a Province of Peace.

These and other examples illustrate the critical challenge we face to continue the struggle for freedom from hunger, from disease, from ignorance and fear.

Progress is being made with regard to these challenges. We can give many examples of this, including the provision of land to thousands of families, new schools and clinics that have been built and roads that have been constructed.

This includes the houses, roads and bridges that have been constructed to overcome the damage that had been caused by last year's extensive floods.

It has also been encouraging to hear reports of initiatives taken by the Premier of the Province to bring together the overall leadership in the Province, including religious leaders, jointly to work on common programmes to combat racism.

The fact that poverty and underdevelopment in the Province remain as extensive as they are, confirms the depth and gravity of the challenge we face to overcome the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

Perhaps the most important memory we will carry with us from the Northern Province is the happiness and enthusiasm of the ordinary people of the Province, who received us with smiles on their faces and great warmth.

Despite their problems, these masses share firm hopes and a deep conviction that our country is set on the correct path and that they are not condemned to permanent suffering and deprivation.

It is more than obvious that for them Freedom Day means something very valuable, the necessary condition for us to achieve the vital and fundamental objective of a better life for all. We must commit ourselves to do everything in our power to ensure that the hopes of our people are fulfilled.

Minerals Development Bill

Giving expression to the Freedom Charter

The draft Minerals Development Bill represents a practical expression of the vision of the Freedom Charter and the will of the people as expressed on 27 April 1994.

The current dual system of mineral rights ownership is a historical legacy bequeathed to us by both colonialism and apartheid. Besides limiting equal and equitable access to mineral rights, it encourages sterilisation of large areas thus preventing the optimal exploitation of the country's natural resources for the benefit of all.

The prevailing mineral rights regime has evolved over a period of more than 120 years. The defining feature of this system has throughout been the systematic exclusion of the black people of this country from participation as equal players with their white counterparts in the economy.

The introduction of pass laws and other discriminatory pieces of legislation around 1872 effectively removed all mineral rights ownership from the indigenous people and restricted their movement, thus curtailing their economic activity and reducing them to mere purveyors of cheap labour. The Gold Law of the South African Republic provided that "no coloured person defined to mean African, Asiatic, Native or Coloured American, Coolie or Chinamen may be a license holder or in any way be connected with the working of the diggings, but shall be allowed as a workman in the service of whites".

The various laws regulating the mining industry were consolidated into the Mining Rights Act of 1976. Section 7(3) of this Act prohibited the issuance of a prospecting permit to "any coloured person or coloured persons holding a controlling interest or any Black person".

Undoubtedly, this contributed in no small measure to the current underdevelopment in our rural areas as these were regarded only as reservoirs of cheap labour. The migrant labour system ensured that men would oscillate between the mining areas and their villages where they would ultimately be dumped when old age or ill-health incapacitated them.

Those men and women, drawn from all the sectors of our society, who gathered in Kliptown in July 1955 and adopted the Freedom Charter were driven in their resolve to rid this country of the apartheid system by their first hand experience of the rapacity of this system.

When they declared "the mineral wealth beneath the soil . shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole" they were committing future generations to an agenda for the transformation of society into one predicated upon equality and equity. The injustices of our past still manifest themselves in the ownership patterns of our mining industry.

Accordingly, the White Paper on Minerals and Mining in South Africa and its translation into law in the draft Minerals and Development Bill is our response to the clarion call of our forebears and those who laid down their lives for democracy and our constitution which also commits the nation to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa's natural resources. This we have done actuated by the belief that the Freedom Charter should continue to provide the inspiration for the moral foundation underpinning our democratic government's policies and laws.

The draft Minerals Development Bill recognises mineral resources as the common heritage of all South Africans and the state as the custodian of the nation's mineral resources. The Bill makes specific provision for benefits to accrue directly to our people. It will require companies to contribute towards the socio-economic development of the areas they are operating in.

The proposed Bill commits the state to make use of royalties to promote rural and local economic development in areas affected by mining. These do not only include areas where mining is physically taking place, but encompasses those places that have historically and still play the role of labour supply to the mining industry, the so-called labour-sending areas.

According to the United National General Assembly Resolution 1803 of 1962 "the right of peoples and nations to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources must be exercised in the interest of the well-being of the people of the states concerned". It can therefore be argued that the current mineral rights regime which allows mineral rights to vest in private hands restricts the state from exercising permanent sovereignty over its natural resources in the interest of all South Africans. The fact that the private holders of mineral rights have no obligation to exploit these rights means that they can hold them in perpetuity without using them.

In addition, Article 21(1) and (2) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights states: "All peoples shall freely dispose of their wealth and natural resources. This right shall be exercised in the exclusive interest of the people. In no case shall a people be deprived of it. Parties to the present Charter shall individually and collectively exercise the right to free disposal of their wealth and natural resources with a view to strengthening African unity and solidarity."

This Bill, although maligned by those who are bent on opposing transformation in South Africa, brings us closer to the realisation of the noble dream of those heroes and heroines who defied the brutality of the apartheid system and gathered at Kliptown to adopt the Freedom Charter. Any interpretation of the draft Minerals Development Bill therefore has to be read within the context of the liberation struggle of our peoples to gain meaningful control over our minerals wealth.

In the Sowetan of 17 April 2001, President Thabo Mbeki indicated there are people who are determined to oppose the draft Bill. While everybody wants to be seen to be supportive of transformation, efforts are being made behind the scenes to thwart the passage of the Bill. Some people who profess to support the objectives of the Bill are "preparing an elaborate strategy to oppose the Bill. This however will not succeed as what will prevail in the end is the will of the people not parochial self interests".

The people gathered at Kliptown on 26 June 1955 declared ". We pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing nothing of our strength and courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won".

We call upon all the progressive forces in the country, who have fought for this country, to put their support behind this draft Minerals Development Bill. The transfer of the minerals wealth to the people is one of the democratic changes that the Congress of the People decided to pursue and die for in 1955. There is no way that this Government can fail those who paid the ultimate price for the attainment of democracy in this country and the generations of South Africans to come.

MORE INFORMATION:

• Draft Minerals Development Bill, December 2000
• White Paper on a Mining and Minerals Policy, October 1998
• Freedom Charter, June 1955

Local government

New system needs vision and community participation to achieve its developmental objectives

The evolution of developmental local government in South Africa will depend in large measure on the ability of local councils to involve communities in managing their own localities.

In the latest edition of the ANC's political discussion journal Umrabulo, due out next week, several authors examine the challenges facing the new local government structures established following elections in December last year.

A defining feature of the new system, which represents the final phase of local government transition, is the space it offers to ordinary people to become actively involved in governance. Residents have the right to contribute to the municipality's decision-making processes. They have the right to submit recommendations and complaints to the council and to "regular disclosure of the state of affairs of the municipality, including its finances".

Ward committees provided for in national legislation are important vehicles for resident participation. Though not compulsory, these committees can make representations on any issue affecting their ward to the councillor or through the councillor to the council. It can also exercise any duty or power delegated to it by the council. A ward committee comprises the ward councillor as chairperson and up to ten other people representing a "diversity of interests in the ward". Women have to be equitably represented.

Ideally, the ward committees should be used to mobilise the broadest range of interests in the community behind progressive goals. Attempts should be made to ensure representation from civic, development, trade union, business, taxi, women, youth, religious, cultural and other organisations.

Community participation should not be romanticised however. It requires capacities, resources and fundings that are often scarce. The space for community participation can be exploited by privileged elites to hold back transformation or even further narrow, sectarian interests. It will therefore take time, and practice, to develop methods of community participation which strengthen the developmental capacity of councils.

Urban renewal in Johannesburg

The experience of Johannesburg in addressing the challenges of rapid urbanisation, decline of the inner city and financial crises is explored in Umrabulo in some detail.

Johannesburg contributes 15 percent of South Africa's real GDP and 12 percent of its jobs. It is home to 60 percent of the country's corporate headquarters and its financial capital. Yet the growth of its population has outstripped economic growth resulting in worsening living standards for the poor and a widening gap in income levels with strong racial features.

The long-term development framework adopted by the city - Igoli 2010 -proposes a balance approach that addresses past imbalance while building on the city's competitive advantage. This framework focuses on meeting the changing economic needs of the city through a focused town planning process, investment in economic infrastructure and perhaps the use of incentives for investment in targeted sectors and areas. It includes a human development agenda to encourage the fast-tracking of skills development and the creation of a safe environment for the city's residents, including measures to tackle crime.

In the next ten years the city will need to invest R10bn in housing, electricity, water and sanitation, roads and storm water and transport. This ambitious programme can only be undertaken with the appropriate administrative structures with the right orientation and work culture. Through this multi-pronged approach, the new Johannesburg unicity council seeks to implement an urban renewal approach that is sustainable.

Rural development

Councils in rural areas face some similar challenges to their urban counterparts, but also have many unique problems. These are discussed in Umrabulo's examination of government's Integrated Rural Development Strategy (IRDS), which is a multi-dimensional approach integrating the work of several departments and all three spheres of government.

It recognises that without the resuscitation of rural economies there can be no sustainable growth and development in rural areas. Even with growth not all will benefit, making it essential to continue to improve the provision of social services to the vulnerable in rural areas.

Critical among the programmes which will contribute to the success of IRDS is a comprehensive land reform programme. This needs to be complimented by measures on human resource development, income generating projects, social services, affirmative procurement and rural finances.

This development needs to be driven by rural people. As the only organisation with such a level of presence in rural areas, the ANC's councillors and local leaders need to play a key mobilisation and education role within rural communities. People need to understand the programmes of government and the constraints faced to ensure that communities do not have unreasonable expectations. The skills of NGOs and private sector initiatives will also need to be harnessed in the development process.

The full text of Umrabulo is available from the ANC web site at http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pubs/umrabulo/

Click here to subscribe to the print version of Umrabulo.

Conspiracy reports

Claims of 'plots to oust the President' will not destabilise or distract the ANC

Recent public reports surrounding claims of challenges for the presidency of the ANC have tended to obscure, rather than illuminate, the issues. These claims include, but are not limited to, an investigation by the SA Police Service (SAPS) into allegations that individuals, some within the ANC, intend to physically harm President Thabo Mbeki. These claims do not emerge by accident.

They emerge at a moment when the African National Congress, and its allies in the democratic movement, have achieved substantial progress in the transformation of South Africa, and are poised to accelerate the pace of that transformation. The ANC has, by virtue of this, earned a profile nationally and internationally as a leading force for social change. This has attracted much support for the organisation. It has also attracted the attention of those forces resistant to such change both in South Africa and further afield.

Among the arsenal of weaponry long employed by those opposed to democratic change is the projection and encouragement of leadership struggles within the ANC to sow confusion and division. These have taken the form of reports, almost out of nowhere, of secretive plans to contest senior ANC positions. These have often been preceded or accompanied by reports of efforts to sideline the same people supposedly seeking to contest these positions.

Media commentators have returned to this as a recurring theme over several years claiming the deliberate marginalisation of ANC leaders who could be perceived as rivals to the President. Consistently, these commentators have sought to present these people - the same ANC members named yesterday by the Minister of Safety and Security - as victims of an 'autocratic' President whose leadership style is characterised by 'Machiavellian' intrigue. Yet in all the reports little tangible evidence - beyond the circumstantial - has been offered to confirm the accuracy of the claim.

The strength of the ANC is its ability to distinguish between reported conspiratorial activities and robust political debate and democratic contestation of positions. It is a distinction which the ANC has articulated many times and which is fully understood by all members of its National Executive Committee.

Any member of the ANC is allowed to contest or be elected to any position within the organisation, including that of President. Any ANC member that stands for the position of President or supports a particular candidate for president within the norms and procedures of the organisation has every right to do so. No ANC member can be victimised or prejudiced for exercising this right.

Reports that the ANC plans to purge 'rivals' to President Mbeki are inaccurate. The ANC has on numerous occasions urged all its members who wish to contest any position in the organisation to do so, and to do so openly.

Values and culture of the ANC

These supposed intrigues have failed over the years to divide or terminally weaken the ANC precisely because of the values and organisational culture of the ANC. The objectives of the ANC - the achievement of a non-racial, non-sexist, united and democratic South Africa - are reflected in its organisational practice. Central to this is the right and responsibility of every ANC member to contribute to the formulation of its policy, the development of its strategy and the implementation of its programme. It is the responsibility of every member to defend and implement the decisions of the collective.

It is these features that have enabled the ANC to be resilient in the face of numerous attacks, to weather several organisational storms and to emerge stronger and better equipped to take forward the struggle for liberation.

Investigation into security threats

The South African Police Service has indicated they are investigating claims that individuals, some within the ANC, intend to physically harm President Thabo Mbeki. The investigation is in line with the SAPS' constitutional and legal obligations. It is up to the security services to establish whether there is any substance to the reports they have received, and to act as required by law on any evidence they gather.

In the interests of the security of the President and in the interests of those who have been publicly named by the Minister, it is important that the investigation be thorough and expeditious.

The three members named in the probe - Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Mathews Phosa - are all ANC members steeped in the democratic traditions and culture of the ANC. As the three have now been publicly named, it is essential that the investigation proceeds without delay and that these people have an opportunity to clear their names.

The ANC has full confidence in the government, the Minister of Safety and Security and the SAPS to carry out this investigation in a thorough and even-handed manner.

The allegation that state resources have been used to deal with party matters is baseless. Minister Tshwete has initiated this investigation in his capacity as a custodian of the safety and security of all South African citizens, including the President of our country.

The ANC does not believe the recent reports represent a significant challenge to the unity, integrity and effectiveness of the organisation. The structures of the ANC will respond to such challenges by remaining vigilant against efforts to derail the programme of the movement, by deepening the democratic practices of the ANC and by furthering open political debate and discussion within the organisation.

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