We too have a dream of a better future

The United States of America has just concluded the Presidential election campaign. The people of the world watched and waited in hope that fundamental change will take place, and the people of that country voted overwhelmingly for hope and change.

We congratulate the President-Elect, Barack Obama, for being elected the first African-American president and the 44th president of the United States. This is a landmark in the history of the world. It ushers in the beginning of a new era and is an affirmation that all people are equal - and when given equal opportunities, they can reach their dreams and achieve anything.

For us in South Africa this is a development which promises better working relations between our country and the United States on many fronts. It also marks an end to jackboot politics, and unilateralism in international affairs.

In his "I Have A Dream" speech, Martin Luther King Jnr spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites would live as equals, where his four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. The dream is now a reality.

We congratulate the American voters who turned out in great numbers - never seen in recent history - to make their will known. We congratulate the manner in which those who did not win accepted the elections outcome, however painful or disappointing, and undertook to do everything in their power to work with the victor to make their country work.

This is an important lesson for Africa where there is an emerging trend of refusing to concede electoral defeat and to hold countries and the continent at ransom. It is also important lesson for the winners to work with the losers for the good of their country.

These lessons are also important for South Africa as we approach our fourth democratic elections in 2009. There will be losers and a winner, but our differences will have to be put aside and we should all work together for the good of our country.

The ANC's objectives of a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa still remain a distant dream. We are yet to make real certain ends of our historic objectives as adopted in Kliptown during the Congress of the People. The ideals contained in the Freedom Charter are yet to be fully realised.

We hope that our young people learned from their peers in America about the importance of their democratic right to vote to shape their future and to make it happen. The number of young people who voted in these elections is remarkable and a source of great inspiration that all young people should assimilate.

We have always argued that the right to vote is one of the most sacred rights that must be respected and exercised at all times. It is critical to have the largest majority of people voting to deepen democracy and to legitimise the state.

Our right to vote was earned through blood and tears, imprisonment and torture, sacrifice and exile. We need to exercise this right in honour and memory of those who perished so we could live. We also need to use our vote for the betterment of our conditions and to secure the future for generations to come.

As the ANC we also understand that people vote for parties they trust and which they know are going to deliver on their promises. Over the past 14 years, the ANC has worked with the people of South Africa to make our country a better place. Access to housing, water, electricity, social grants, health care and education has improved the lives of millions.

Our economy has grown faster, created more jobs and withstood the world's economic storm better than most countries. But there is still more to be done. Our goal is to continue working together with all South Africans in a renewed effort to build on what has been achieved, to harness the energy of all to build the economy that will create more jobs, to fight crime, and reduce poverty for a better life for all.

Only the ANC has the policies and capacity to get South Africans working together. We are confident that the ANC will win next year's elections with an overwhelming majority, even better than the last time.

We will win because we have superior policies and we know that the ongoing process of transformation and reconstruction needs to be driven by the people. The people need to decide which direction this process should take and which organisation should have a mandate to undertake this process in government.

While elections are a cornerstone of democracy, they are not the only way in which the people need to participate in governance and development. Participation in elections needs to be complimented by participation in community-based forums, like ward committees, policing forums and development forums. We know that people need to be involved in the process of developing laws and monitoring their implementation.

Unless people participate in the process of choosing their public representatives the work that still needs to be done is unlikely to proceed at a pace and in a direction that people would want. This is particularly important for the youth, who are, quite literally, the future of South Africa.

They need to participate in the elections in great numbers to ensure that they direct the future that they will live in. Interaction with the youth, together with some recent public surveys, show that youth are the most politically engaged section of society, and most interested in ensuring a better future.

The message of the ANC to the youth and people of South Africa is: "Have your say, get your ID and register now to vote."

Growth and development

Time for a bold step forward

Our values are underpinned by the quest for unity instead of division, reconciliation rather than bitterness, and continuous pursuit of social and economic justice rather than accepting poverty and inequality as inevitable. More importantly, human solidarity is paramount in our country, in Africa and the world.

Today we must communicate hope in the face of a global financial crisis, in the aftermath of attacks on foreign nationals in South Africa, and we must assert that our democracy can withstand any contestation of ideas if they are based on principles, policy and the well-being of all our people.

Today we must commit to building unity and social cohesion.

Today, too, it is appropriate that we mark the ascendancy of Senator Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States of America (USA). Congratulations are in order not simply because he is the first President with his roots in the continent of Africa, but because he has raised the expectations that the world could be better and that the USA could play a more constructive role by respecting our multilateral institutions, by solving problems through objective dialogue, and by investing in the developing world.

While not believing that a single individual can easily overturn an entire system, we must remain committed to the possibility of world peace, of economic justice and of a world in which the powerful recognise their own vulnerability if the less powerful and the powerless are unable to manage their growing levels of desperation.

South Africa has entered a time that will test our fortitude as a nation, and our ability to protect the gains we have made.

We have had over four years of fairly rapid economic growth when we were able to add hundreds of thousands of new jobs annually; when the incomes of ordinary South Africans grew 4% a year on average; and when government was able to increase its expenditure, especially on social services, by nearly 10% a year.

Our living standards have been steadily improving as we steadily but surely chipped away at the scourge of unemployment, and as we keep our focus firmly on reaching the Millennium Development Goals.

In the midst of this growing optimism a sudden black cloud descended on the world economy, posing a threat to the gains we have been making.

An international financial crisis has erupted, pushing many parts of the world economy into a slower mode, with especially some highly industrialised countries expecting very low growth or even the shrinking of their economies.

Accordingly, in South Africa we have had to lower our expectations too, not because our own financial sector is threatened - it is not. Our financial institutions have been scrutinised; they have been tested; and they have passed those tests with flying colours.

Thus in South Africa ours has been a slowdown off a secure base with sound fundamentals. Unlike in some other countries where the cutbacks have been catastrophic. We are not going to enter a recession, and indeed we expect our economic performance to be better than that of many of our peers.

One important reason for this is that we have a very big infrastructure investment programme: we are building or rebuilding roads, bridges, airports, pipelines, railway systems, houses, hospitals, prisons, schools and community facilities. In addition, we are also driving infrastructure programmes to host the best FIFA Football World Cup ever.

We will continue with this investment programme as well as our social investment, even in this difficult time because we have been careful with our finances.

Nevertheless, growth will be slower than we had previously hoped for. This is in part because the international financial crisis has reduced the demand for some of our exports. Both government and all of our households should make sure not to make financial commitments that might be difficult to sustain.

No space for complacency

Similarly, we must not be complacent about the electricity challenges that we continue to face. Not only must we continue to roll out electricity to the poor who have no access, we must also continue to manage the demand of all who already have access to electricity.

This is a time to take a bold step forward; not to stand still, or sit back as there is clearly a huge amount of work to do.

We remain committed to the six tasks identified in our Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (AsgiSA). These are to:

• improve our infrastructure,
• invest in the skills of our people,
• support industrial development through better competition, trade and industrial sector policies,
• strengthen the capacity of the state, especially in support of economic development,
• reduce the volatility of the rand, and
• ensure that economic growth is more effectively shared.

In all of these areas we have made progress, but it is equally true that there is still much to do, and especially in the current economic environment our ultimate prosperity lies in investing in our future.

Though we grew strongly in recent years and more people than ever before were employed in new jobs, we have not been able to reduce some of our severe inequalities. This means that the imperative of growth must more strongly be balanced by the imperative to share the growth.

Inequality and the persistence of poverty remain the most daunting challenges facing us as a nation, and if we can tackle these head on we will share with our people the proceeds of growth.

We need to strengthen our efforts to provide high quality basic services to all. Similarly, we need to ensure that the developmental outcomes of our interventions enable our people to achieve a decent quality of life.

An anti-poverty strategy must also address inequality by addressing the factors that perpetuate this phenomenon. A critical factor is skills development. Without adequate human capital individuals are unable to take advantage of the economic opportunities available.

We cannot continue to have good schools for a minority of our people and poorly performing schools for the majority. We need to address the inequalities in educational outcomes that result in inequalities in the labour market and economy.

Furthermore, in tackling poverty, we also need to ensure the accumulation of assets for the poor which will enable them to create various economic opportunities. Better roads, better fences, access to irrigation, access to electrical power - these are the kind of assets that can help poor households improve their own livelihoods.

Providing safety nets in the form of social assistance and the provision of basic services continues to be critical in our efforts to combat poverty. In the longer run, though, our goal is to reduce dependence on social assistance by assisting able bodied individuals to become self-reliant. We will know that we are reaching our objectives when the number of people requiring social assistance falls because more people have decent work or run their own businesses.

As we go forward, we want to build and reinforce partnerships at all levels between departments, agencies, business, society and non-governmental organisations. This must be based on an open and collaborative dialogue on our shared objectives and our respective contributions to shared growth and the reduction of poverty and inequality.

We need to set goals together, to focus on them and agree on concrete steps about how to achieve these goals in preparing for the next period of government, so that we are focussed on our challenges and certain about our priorities.

We encourage social partners and citizens at large not only to give their own views on these critical matters, but also to assess the impact of their own activities on the social dynamics within our nation and further afield.

As a nation we face a choice: we could continue on the same path of gradual and stop-start improvements, or we could instead identify bold steps that will raise our level of growth and development; we could be perpetually suspicious about each other or collaborate in building social cohesion and unite our people against everything that creates insecurity in our society.

** Kgalema Motlanthe is Deputy President of the ANC and President of South Africa. This is an edited extract from an address to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) held in the Chris Hani District, Eastern Cape, 7 November 2008.

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