We will prove there is no alternative to the ANC

We have proven that South Africa is a stable democratic country that is ruled and governed on the basis of solid democratic principles. As we move forward we must be united in consolidating the democratic victories. We must be vigilant at all times about possible pitfalls that may lie ahead of us, and understand that to succeed we will need to unite and speak with one voice.

We must not be diverted from the immediate tasks and urgent challenges that face us. We must all focus on supporting our government in the important tasks of fighting poverty, crime, delivering essential basic services to the people as well as our efforts to create a developmental state.

Together with our allies we have an urgent and important obligation to contest the democratic elections next year. This is a significant task, when we approach these elections we must approach them as a united and solid force with a determination to deliver an overwhelming democratic victory for the ANC. We need to be of one mind and purpose. We need to be clear about our strategic objectives in relation to our election strategy.

We carry a weighty responsibility, to honour through our actions the proud traditions of struggle that have characterised our Alliance over decades. Most importantly, we carry a responsibility to the people of this country, and to the generations that will follow, to lead a national democratic revolution that will banish from our society all forms of discrimination, oppression and deprivation.

The conference in Polokwane provided a clear direction which we must undertake to create a better life. We agreed on policies that our government in 2009 should implement to accelerate social and economic transformation. We have made it clear that the creation of decent work opportunities will be the primary focus of our economic policies. In seeking much-needed foreign and domestic investments, we will not compromise the rights of workers and the poor and the national democratic revolution.

We will continue to work with business and labour to build a vibrant, resilient and sustainable economy. We want to focus on job creation because while many families have access to social grants and other poverty alleviation programmes, many of these households and communities remain trapped in poverty. They are dependent on the state and unable to access the opportunities created by the positive economic climate.

We have done exceptionally well in providing means for such families to survive, through a massive social security programme, extending social grants to more then 12 million South Africans to date, especially children. We have stated that we are building a developmental state and not a welfare state. Therefore our anti-poverty programmes must seek to empower people to take themselves out of poverty, while creating adequate social nets to protect the most vulnerable in our society such as older persons, people with disabilities and vulnerable children.

We have also stated clearly that we want to accelerate the land reform programme. We want land reform to be linked to rural development programmes. People should not just be given land and left on their own. They must be assisted by government through various programmes to ensure that the land is utilised optimally to fight poverty.

We are not going to allow crime to divert our attention from fighting poverty and building a better life for our people. Based on successes during the struggle against apartheid, we have decided to revive street committees to support our police in fighting crime. The war against crime is everybody's business; it cannot be left to government or the police alone.

We have seen the value of investing in education and see the gains in all developing countries in Africa and beyond who undertook this path. The literacy rate is high in developing countries where a concerted effort was made to prioritise education. We intend to promote access to education from the pre-school to tertiary level. Education and skills development are powerful tools that will assist us to fight poverty.

We have reiterated the call for state owned enterprises to revisit their role of training our young people. Many artisans in our country were trained in what was then called parastatals, and this made an enormous contribution to the country's skills base. We are not saying other business entities should not invest in skills development, but we encourage a return to what worked successfully in the past.

Health care is no doubt one of the most important areas of intervention. A healthy population is the cornerstone of development. We want to ensure that access to health becomes an achievable goal in rural and urban areas as well as established and informal settlements. From primary to secondary health care, to the revitalisation of our hospitals and clinics, the health for all campaign will be our rallying cry in 2009.

We also want more action with regards to the reduction of HIV infections, in effective treatment for tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, as well as widespread HIV prevention, treatment and support programmes. Our Polokwane resolutions are extensive and far-reaching and should enable us to move a great step forward towards achieving our goals.

We at Luthuli House will now work flat out to renew and build the organisation and prepare for an overwhelming victory in the 2009 so that we can improve on our already exceptional record of service delivery. We are going to focus all our energies on getting the ANC ready for elections. We will prove that there is no alternative to the ANC. Nobody has a better programme than the ANC for the social and economic transformation of this country.

Scenarios 2025

Exploring South Africa's possible paths to the future

Always thinking ahead, the ANC-led government this week published its 'Scenarios 2025', which aims to stimulate discussion about some of the challenges South Africa might face after 30 years of democracy.

SA Scenarios 2025, looks 'back' at three paths that the country may have traversed by 2025. The research presented, and the scenarios envisaged, are all meant to provoke discussion and debate.

Scenarios are not predictions, nor roadmaps; they are constructed stories about a particular point in the future and some informed speculation about the crosscutting paths that might get us there. The power of scenarios lies in provoking a sense of what might be possible and in combining probabilities in ways that none might have thought of previously.

Scenarios often allow the detection of faint signals that may disrupt even the most thorough planning cycles. They are designed to help identify pitfalls and options, and factors in the future we may choose to adopt or avoid. The ANC and its government invites you to use these scenarios as part of a process of thinking about what we can and should do, now and in the near future, to avoid risks, obstacles, bottlenecks and blockages to achieve more than we can currently imagine.

The research for this scenario exercise started with a concerted attempt to understand a wide range of forces at work in the world and in South Africa in 2008. This involved interviews with well-placed South Africans, as well as a series of working sessions with a core group of people, drawn from academia, business, unions, political parties, and think tanks. As a result, the ANC government was able to identify 24 'variables', or factors that are key shapers of our reality and which we need to understand to construct views of the future.

Confidentiality was guaranteed, so as to encourage frank discussions. All interviews were transcribed, and elements of the transcripts edited so as to protect the interviewees' identities.

Key trends for each variable were identified. From the variables, seven Key Driving Forces (KDFs) were identified. The KDFs are aggregations of trends that are likely to be the most fundamental shapers of our world and our country to 2025, and that are most likely to create the context that the seventh democratically-elected government and society at large will face in the middle of the 2020s.

The KDFs form the bedrock of the scenario storylines. While some KDFs identify factors that can be influenced through the agency of government, great attention is paid to those variables with the highest levels of uncertainty and impact. As such, what the storylines depict are three of the possible combinations of the various KDFs. There are many more combinations that can be devised, but these have been constructed to provide the most plausible but challenging narratives of what hurdles the country might have to go through, in the build-up to 2025.

The scenarios are not 'worst-case' scenarios - a technique often used to contemplate unlikely, but not impossible, turns of events in the future. A deliberate effort has also been made to avoid positing a 'best-case' scenario. The scenarios are therefore neither 'worst-case' nor 'best-case' scenarios and try to avoid the simple polarities of 'high road', 'low road' scenario making. Rather they steer towards various plausible combinations of events from clear antecedents in 2008.

Having 'seen', at least in our mind's eye, some worked-out glimpses of the future, we might be moved to try to anticipate some outcomes and secure others. Indeed, these scenarios are meant to provoke introspection about long-term planning, about how policy is translated into action in order to help avoid calamity and to embrace opportunities more fully. Below we examine some of the Key Driving Forces.

Shifts in global economic power

The rapid industrialisation and growth of China and India, and their burgeoning demand for resources and markets, is changing the world in profound ways. By 2025, given current trends, China's GDP is expected to be about the same as the USA's (the USA's GDP is currently more than double the GDP of China and India combined) reflecting three decades of Chinese growth at more than double the rate of the USA and the EU.

Will the growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China and the oil bounty of many Middle East countries do more for the economic growth of Africa in the next 20 years than 60 years of Western investment and aid have achieved?

While this appears likely to be the case, there are significant dangers too: China and Russia may be as cavalier in their disregard for democracy and human rights as the USA and ex-colonial powers have been in the past. Trade as a percentage of global GDP is shifting upwards at an accelerated rate. By 2025, trade in goods and services will account for more than half of global GDP. The ability to trade with others is becoming more important to any country's ability to grow than ever before. Africa's economic clout also grows significantly by 2025; the key question is how much of this is driven by South Africa, or how much others take the lead over time as other continental powers grow faster, or are led better, than South Africa.

Shifts in global political power

While shifts in international power relationships partly reflect shifting economic power, they do not do so in mechanical ways. The USA military budget is still larger than those of the next 15 largest economies, including China, combined. By 2025, the USA has still by far the most formidable armed force in the world, although on a much smaller scale than in 2008.

Despite this, a multilateral approach to global problems is likely to have taken root, with an expansion of early intervention mechanisms, the rapid deployment of peace keepers, and more united action by formations such as the UN, the G5, G8, G13 and G20.

Current trends suggest far fewer armed conflicts than ever before in human history over the next decade or so. But it is also possible that conflicts over resources disturb this trend: are there sudden resource tipping points that would propel otherwise peaceful nations into war?

And how much more powerful will Africa, or key African states or blocs, become as world players, and what will shape this?

South Africa's leading role in re-shaping elements of international discourse over the past 15 years, and in re-imagining Africa, may be challenged by other fast-growing power blocs in East and West Africa, and by South Africa pursuing more narrow national and regional interests in the future.

Resource constraints

The world is already caught in an energy gap between the age of fossil fuels, particularly oil, and the slow development of the coming age of alternative fuel sources.

By 2025, nuclear, hydrogen, solar and wind will be the predominant emerging energy sources. But, on current trends, the transition may not be well managed. Higher costs of food production may become ever more entrenched, and international tourism and mobility are likely to be negatively affected.

The growing shortage and deterioration in quality of other critical resources, particularly soil, air and water, are also highly likely to become key global issues. Locally, three additional KDFs mirror these global drivers.

South Africa's economic growth

An elemental shaper of the future of South Africa is our economic performance. How fast does the economy grow and along what paths? How competitive and productive does it become?

The way in which the fruits of this growth are shared is as important as growth itself: is the economy ever able to create decent and sustainable jobs at a rate greater than the growth of the labour force?

Faced with persistent long-term structural unemployment, what measures will the new government adopt? How responsive will the private sector be to national imperatives?

Will the rapid decline in South Africa's manufacturing, mining and agricultural sectors in relation to their relative contribution to GDP be arrested and reversed - and how?

As critical as these internal factors are, South Africa's relationship with Africa will be as important. Can our economy become more integrated into Africa?

Governance How able, competent, efficient, honest and legitimate is government going to be in 2025, and in the years leading to 2025? Is it able to promote national competitiveness and drive the economy forward, or does it inhibit innovation, productivity and social inclusion?

How well does it deal with the key issues of health, education, crime and corruption over time?

Related to this are matters pertaining to electoral politics and dynamics within the largest political alliances: the tone of political discourse, the conduct of the leadership and centripetal and centrifugal trends tugging at the ruling party. Ultimately will leadership engender a greater sense of purpose and unity?

Social fabric

The state has the resources to fashion at least a basic sense of nationhood, and a sense of human solidarity that cuts across class, gender, race and ethnic divisions. It can do this, among other ways by providing citizens, especially the youth, with the skills to operate in a 21st century economy, increasing citizens' average levels of wellness, and creating a sense of security and belonging.

Government can also help invoke a sense of pride and aspiration by articulating an engaging national narrative and by standing for the highest good. But there are limits in this regard. Many of the dynamics that impact on social cohesion depend on value systems within society. Their forging is the domain of educational, religious, community and other sectors, including the nation's arts and cultural productions. How will government interact with these socialising forces for maximum national benefit?

The story of 2025 - of what South Africa faces then, and the routes we took to get there - will be told mostly in reference to these key drivers. The answers will describe the paths we travel to the seventh democratic election in 2024, and to the South Africa and the world we live in by 2025. The scenarios outlined reveal the broad contours of three of these possible paths.

They are not exhaustive by any means. We hope that they begin a dialogue about the future we choose. The ANC invites readers to interact with it and its government to define the paths best to travel to a prosperous future.

More Information:

• SA Scenarios 2025

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