ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 1, No. 41, 2 - 8 November 2001 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: South Africans have reason to be positive * Budget framework: Bold programme to increase social and infrastructure spending * Burundi: Hopes for a new beginning * Opposition politics: Cooperation with NNP informed by tasks of nation-building * Johannesburg Council: DA loss a victory for democracy --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT South Africans have reason to be positive Today is our national Be Positive Day. I commend this Day and what it seeks to achieve to all our people. To be positive means to enjoy the rare gift of hope. It means confidence that tomorrow will be better than today. It indicates the possibility to see further than one's nose and therefore further than today's problems, and thus to see into the promise of the future. It signifies the commitment of the positive person to contribute to making tomorrow a better day both for himself or herself and for all our communities. Our country has great need of such people. I say this because there are negative people in our country who fondly present ours as a bleak future. Both in private and in public, these do not hesitate to convey the most pessimistic view about where we are today and where we will be tomorrow. These include South Africans now resident elsewhere in the world. Some among these took advantage of the radically enhanced acceptability of South Africa and South Africans in the rest of the world to settle outside their country of birth. Some among these were driven to relocate by their refusal to accept our new democratic order. Rather than being positive about these changes and our future, they convinced themselves that we are bound to collapse under the weight of various negative developments they convinced themselves are inevitable. They informed themselves that our country would regress into a one-party autocracy with no respect for human rights. Our economy would collapse because of mismanagement and corruption. Our white citizens would be discriminated against by an "Africanist" government through the implementation of such programmes as affirmative action. They would also fall victim to a crime wave which the government is either unable or unwilling to confront, directed especially against our white compatriots. The population would be wiped out by HIV/AIDS, spread by endemic rape and sexual promiscuity especially among the African majority. These are some of the messages that some of our fellow South Africans, who see no place for themselves in a democratic South Africa, communicate everyday, both inside and outside our country. It is partly to respond to these merchants of doom and gloom that we do indeed need such initiatives as Be Positive Day. This week we were very fortunate to hear important voices in our country speaking out frankly and openly about how we should conduct ourselves as South Africans. I am convinced that all of us, regardless of colour or political creed, need to listen carefully to what they said and to judge ourselves against the standards they urged us to achieve. By what they said, they moved to the front ranks of those who are working to help us define who we are and who we should be, as we engage in struggle to build a new South Africa. I refer here to three people who spoke at different places, without any prior consultation or co-ordination among themselves. What united them is that they are South Africans who are committed to their country and all its people, determined to do what they can to make life worth living for each and everyone of us. The three very different South Africans I speak of are Mr Marthinus van Schalkwyk, leader of the New National Party, Mr Nicholas Oppenheimer, Chairperson of De Beers and Mr Jeremy Gardiner, a director of Investec Asset Management. Mr Schalkwyk spoke during this week's Joint Session of Parliament, which convened to discuss the critically important New Partnership for Africa's Development, the renamed Millennium Partnership for the African Renewal Programme (MAP). He explained that earlier this year he visited Maputo in Mozambique, where he was taken around by young Mozambicans who studied outside their country but returned to rebuild their country. He then went on to say: "If young people can be bright-eyed and enthusiastic about their own country and continent, then there is hope. Of course they could have talked their country down, complained about the poverty and lack of infrastructure, but instead they decided to do something about it. "That is what our country and our continent need. To take pride in one's own is the first step towards rebuilding and bringing about a renaissance. "A renaissance needs architects and then it needs builders. A renaissance is never popular because it questions long-held beliefs and very often those beliefs are prejudices dressed up as beliefs and convictions and, very often, as principles. "Our South African renaissance is waiting to happen. The bricks have been delivered, the mortar is ready, the architect's plans have been delivered to the site, it is time to make a choice. Either one is part of the building team, or will stay at his political shack forever. "The South African liberation puts every South African before a choice. Either one accepts it with its full implications, become a constructive builder and join hands, or one condemns himself to the darkness of permanent bitterness and a longing for the past. Either one's heart is in the new South Africa or it is not. There is no in-between. One cannot be here in body and not in soul... Unfortunately, opposition in our country has been reduced to an angry white voice, mudslinging and character assassination. Our country's multiparty system requires better opposition. Opposition that understands what is in the country's best interest, not one of sound bites, spin doctoring and increasing racial polarisation. "What we need is a new pact between people who still have some unfinished business between them. Between black South Africans and Afrikaans speaking people, and many of us will not understand that. Many unspoken words still hang in the air. The African soil is not a mere commercial commodity to us; to us it contains a message of where we belong. Our unfinished business is not limited to the past; it is also about the future. We are on the verge of a process where people will not ask where they come from historically. They will have to answer the question, where are we going now?. "(What the architects of the new South Africa) had in mind (was) that people would have the courage to take on the future and break out of old moulds and that certainly is what we need to explore together." The day after listening to Mr van Schalkwyk, I had the privilege to participate in the official opening of the very modern hi-tech De Beers Diamond Research Laboratories in Springs. When he spoke, Mr Oppenheimer said: "This site is tangible and exciting proof of our deep and continuing commitment to South Africa. De Beers Industrial Diamonds closed down its synthesis plant in Shannon in Ireland and diverted production from its German plant to this factory in Springs. This high-tech, state-of-the-art facility, which together with the adjacent diamond manufacturing plant, constitute the largest and most advanced synthetic diamond centre in the world... "I hope you will see, with me, in the fabric of these buildings in the money invested here, in the skills we are producing and in the big idea which has brought all these constituents together, a ringing vote of confidence in Springs, in South Africa and in its future. "I often wish that others shared that confidence. And here I refer not merely to skittish foreign investors who fail to discriminate between the problems and the crises of one Southern African country and another; but to those South Africans who tend sometimes to dwell too much on the past and its horrors rather than face the future and its promise. "I am not suggesting that we forget our country's past in an act of collective amnesia. It persists, after all, in the poverty of too many South Africans and, in a more positive sense, the bitter lessons of the apartheid years inform our new constitution in its concern for human rights and in our determination to remain a free, open and tolerant society. To build for the future, one must be prepared to face it, to try to determine in advance the opportunities and the challenges it will bring. "South Africa and its people have much, much more to offer the future and the world than a memory of its dreadful past. I - and everyone in De Beers Industrial Diamonds and De Beers - have confidence in that offer; which is why we have, in a very real way, bet this factory on that future." On the same day that Mr Oppenheimer made these important remarks, yesterday, "Business Day" published an article written by Mr Gardiner. The article was entitled "Doom and gloom myths on SA can be laid to rest" and subtitled "If one takes conventional wisdom with a pinch of salt, the facts tell a positive story". Mr Gardiner then proceeded to deal with ten negative myths about our country demonstrating, in detail, much of the negative "conventional wisdom" about South Africa flies in the face of the truth of what is actually happening in our country. For example, quoting from "The Economist", he showed that in the period from January 1 to September 29 this year, the South African stock market had performed better than many others in both the developed and the developing world. For instance, it had performed better than those of Switzerland, Japan, France, Hong Kong, Germany and Sweden. It had also out-performed the US Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. It had also performed better than the stock markets of Taiwan, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil and Turkey. Mr Gardiner concluded his article in the following words: "SA is not without risk, but when evaluating SA don't allow negative sentiment, and the common 'myth-takers', to cloud what could be a 'risky safe haven' during these turbulent times." The obligation we all face is not to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the negative sentiment of those who are determined to spread harmful myths about our country rather than the truth. Together we have to face our country's future and its promise with confidence and without fear. Together, with both our bodies and our souls firmly located in this South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, we must answer the question, where are we going now? Together, we must demonstrate the courage to take on the future and break out of old moulds, taking pride in our own rather than talk it down. There can be no better messages than these to guide us as we continue to walk together into the positive years that lie ahead of us. The sun is beginning to set on the doomsayers and their myths. Regardless of the many real problems of which we are all aware, there is no doubt that our South African renaissance has begun. Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- BUDGET FRAMEWORK Bold programme to increase social and infrastructure spending The effective management of government spending over the last few years has allowed government to outline a "bold programme" of increased expenditure and further tax relief over the next three years. Presenting the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement in Parliament this week, Finance Minister Trevor Manual said addressing poverty and vulnerability remains the central challenge in setting budget priorities and spending plans. Increases in government spending over the next three years, beginning with the 2002 budget, will focus on health and social grants, infrastructure and housing, and improving the police service and courts. The tax burden on low to middle-income tax payers will be eased further. The policy statement sets out the economic context and the framework of government finances which will guide the 2002 budget. It also outlines the proposals for medium-term government expenditure. Spending on public infrastructure is expected to grow by 8.8 percent a year over the next three years, assisted by several public-private partnerships and projects of state-owned companies. This will have a positive effect on job creation, social development and economic growth. The statement notes the achievements of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) since 1994 in delivering houses, electricity, water, land, free health care, education and training, and improved transport and communications to millions of South Africans. "But the war on poverty is not over," it says. It also notes progress made in reducing inflation, increasing and diversifying trade, and improving productivity in many sectors of the economy. But job creation and relatively low levels of investment and savings are still major economic challenges. These challenges need to be confronted in the context of a global economic slowdown. While the terror attacks in the United States on 11 September have added new uncertainties, Manuel said South Africa was expected to avoid the "dislocation" that many other emerging economies were experiencing. This is due to the tough macro-economic decisions taken by the ANC-led government over the past few years. "South Africa's healthy balance of payments, declining inflation and sound public finances allow us to propose fiscal policy adjustments that will sustain and reinforce the momentum of our growth and development," Manuel said. The country's economic base is now far stronger that it was in 1998, when most emerging markets were rocked by a global financial crisis. Unlike now, little money was then available to support the policy choices of government. Pensions and grants could not be increased to keep pace with inflation. Though the global crisis is now much greater, the country is better placed to withstand it. The economy is now expected to grow by about 2.6 percent this year, down from the February estimate of 3.5 percent. It is expected to rise to an average of 3.5 percent over the next three years. This will allow government, among other things, to increase spending on social services by R15 billion over the next three years. This will provide for: * increasing the numbers of children benefiting from the Child Support Grant to 3 million, and inflation-related increases in the value of all social grants; * raising the size and quantity of housing subsidies to people with low incomes; * improving health care services to respond to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, malaria and other health challenges; * expand and strengthen early childhood education programmes and those aimed at learners with special needs. Spending on municipal infrastructure is set to increase by around 18 percent a year, rising to R4 billion by 2004/5. This will mainly go towards basic infrastructure in low-income areas. The struggle to build safer communities will also receive attention. Additional expenditure of 6.7 percent a year will go to the justice and police services. "Funding will be provided to phase in an additional 6,000 police personnel and to strengthen key court administration functions. Physical security at courts is being stepped up and additional allocations for vehicles, information technology and maintenance of infrastructure has been made to the police services," he said. The broad outline presented in the statement will form the basis of the detailed figures and allocations to be presented next year in the 2002 Budget. Manuel said that given the international economic slowdown and the reduced growth rate this year, it is now even more critical that budgetary allocations are well-targeted and spending programmes effective and well-managed. MORE INFORMATION: Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, October 2001 http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/mtbps/2001/default.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- BURUNDI Hopes for a new beginning The establishment of a transitional government in Burundi this week provides the best hope yet for a peaceful resolution of the country's seven-year civil war, which has cost over 200,000 lives. It is an opportunity to bring to an end the ethnic conflict between Burundi's Hutu majority and Tutsi minority. President Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, was sworn in on 1 November as the country' s president for the first 18 months of the transition period. Sworn in as his deputy was Domitien Ndayizeye from the main Hutu opposition. The two will switch roles in the second 18 months of the transition period. The transition government has been set up in terms of the Arusha Accord, signed in August last year following talks overseen by former President Nelson Mandela. Mandela took over as mediator in the conflict after the death of former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere. Some armed Hutu rebel groups have however refused to support the deal, and a coalition of radical Tutsi parties are refusing to take part in the transitional government. The accord makes provision for a transitional government, in which cabinet posts are split between Tutsis and Hutus; an ethnically-balanced defence force; and an election after the three year transition period. A contingent of South African soldiers was this week sent to Burundi in line with a United Nations security council resolution to protect politicians returning from exile to participate in the transitional government. The current conflict has its roots in colonial times, when Belgium administered the territory through indirect rule, relying on the Tutsi-dominated ruling class. Efforts to establish democratic and ethnically-balanced government after independence were obstructed by assassinations of politicians, a series of military coups and violent ethnic confrontation. The seven-year civil war followed the assassination in 1993 of Burundi's first elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, by factions of the Tutsi-dominated armed forces. Tens of thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by the time the government regained control and elected Cyprien Ntaryamira president in January 1994. Ntaryamira and Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana were killed when their plane was shot down over Kigali, Rwanda in April 1994. This marked the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Buyoya seized power in a bloodless coup in 1996. Fighting between the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu militias continued despite the ongoing regional peace initiative being facilitated at the time by Nyerere. Mandela took over as facilitator after Nyerere's death in October 1999. Even with the Arusha Accord and the establishment of a power-sharing government, several obstacles to peace remain. These include the continued armed activities of the Hutu militia and the opposition of some Tutsi groups to the power-sharing arrangement. These issues will need to be resolved by the incoming government as it begins the difficult process of rebuilding the country and its economy after years of conflict. --------------------------------------------------------------------- OPPOSITION POLITICS Cooperation with NNP informed by tasks of nation-building Any cooperation between the ANC and the New National Party (NNP) needs to be informed by the need to build non-racialism and deepen the process of democratic transformation. The NNP last week indicated it plans to withdraw from the Democratic Alliance, and has approached the ANC to discuss possible cooperation between the organisations. While the ANC has indicated its willingness to discuss with the NNP - a joint working group has been established - it has yet to reach any decisions on the nature or extent of cooperation. The split of the Democratic Alliance (DA) presents opportunities to confront the racial divisions which exist in South African politics, and to broaden the process of reconciliation and nation-building. Formed in the run-up to the 2000 local government elections, the DA brought together the Democratic Party (DP), NNP and the Freedom Alliance into a front united primarily by its opposition to the ANC. Running counter to the process of de-racialisation and nation-building being led by the ANC, the DA represented a retreat into the politics of racial privilege. The key weakness of the DA was that it lacked the vision, policies or tactics to enhance the participation of white South Africans in the transformation and reconstruction of the country. It was a denial by the political representatives of the white community of the willingness and capacity of whites - and certain sections of the coloured and Indian communities - to be actively involved in building a new nation. The withdrawal of the NNP from the DA, and its willingness to cooperate with the ANC, has the potential to reverse the retreat of whites into 'fight back ' mode. It could plant the seed for a meaningful alignment between the NNP, the architects of apartheid, and the ANC, which led the struggle against apartheid, towards a common goal of a non-racial, equitable society. It is on this basis, and with these objectives, that the ANC will engage with the NNP on possible forms of cooperation. The ANC is determined these discussions should not be about juggling seats or trading positions, but about fundamentally challenging the racial divisions of South Africa's political life. --------------------------------------------------------------------- JOHANNESBURG COUNCIL DA loss a victory for democracy The High Court ruling this week that Johannesburg's mayoral committee is legally constituted is an unequivocal rebuke to the anti-democratic tendencies of the Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA brought an application against the Johannesburg metro council to force it to include DA councillors in the mayoral committee. The DA's case was dismissed with costs. By bringing the application, the DA was seeking to deny the democratic right of the majority party to govern. The ANC won 58.9 percent of the vote in Johannesburg in the 2000 local government elections, compared to the DA's 33.5 percent. It is an indication that the DA has not advanced since the unsuccessful bid of some of its constituent parties to entrench an enforced coalition cabinet in the final constitution. This antidemocratic tendency is not uncharacteristic of the party nationally. The DA has frequently objected to the principle of majority rule in committees of the National Assembly, presumably preferring that in the absence of consensus, minority parties should be allowed to exercise veto powers. DA chief whip Douglas Gibson complained in June this year that a motion of confidence in the Speaker would enforce the will of the majority, even going so far in a radio interview to refer to "the tyranny of the majority". In September the DA challenged the right of the government to represent South Africa at the World Conference against Racism, insisting that opposition parties be included in the official government delegation. These sentiments are intended to reinforce a message that the ANC does not have the right to govern - despite winning 66.4 percent of the national vote. By continually trying to undermine the legitimacy of the ANC-led government, the DA hopes to curtail its capacity to govern and its ability to mobilise important sectors of South African society behind its programme of transformation. The Johannesburg high court decision should send a clear signal to the DA that its efforts won't succeed. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2001/at41.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html