Athlone Stadium, Cape Town 8 January 2006
Master of Ceremonies,
Members of the National Executive Committee of the ANC,
Comrades leaders of the ANC, the SACP, COSATU, SANCO and the rest of the democratic movement,
Comrades, friends and fellow South Africans:
First of all, on behalf of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, let me welcome you to this important rally and wish you all a Happy and Successful New Year - 'n Geseënde en Voorspoedige Nuwe Jaar!
We have gathered here today to do two important things. One of these is to celebrate the 94th anniversary of the people's movement, the ANC. To mark this anniversary, today we are releasing the traditional January 8th Statement of our National Executive Committee, which must guide our work throughout this 94th year of the fighting existence of our movement.
The second reason we have gathered here at Athlone Stadium is to launch our Manifesto for the forthcoming March 1st local government elections. This is the document we must take to the people as we talk to them to elect our candidates who must serve the people as Mayors and Municipal Councillors.
Like the January 8th Statement, our Local Government Election Manifesto constitutes a commitment we make to the people to continue working with them to pursue the important challenge of achieving a better life for all.
We therefore urge everybody here at this Stadium and all our members and supporters throughout the country to study and understand both these important documents, the January 8th Statement and the Local Government Manifesto, since they contain our programme of action for the reconstruction and development of our country.
Our movement lives and works with the people in all parts of our country. We live and work among the people as we have done for the 94 years when our movement has led our people in the struggle for liberation and the struggle to eradicate the poverty and underdevelopment that continue to afflict many of our people.
Because we are a peoples' movement that maintains close contact with the masses of our people wherever they live, we know the issues that are of concern to our people. We know the issues that must be addressed to respond to their desires and aspirations.
We know that the masses of our people are very keen that everything should be done to end the poverty that continues to afflict millions, both in the urban and rural areas.
We know that these masses are very interested that job opportunities and opportunities for self-employment should be made available for them so that they earn the incomes to enable them to provide themselves and their families with the means of livelihood they need.
These masses are very interested that they should live in decent circumstances and surroundings through:
We know that the masses of our people hope that they can have access to affordable health care in health facilities they can reach easily, without having to travel long distances, spending a lot of money on transport.
We also know that the masses of our people, including the women and the youth, are very keen to get the education and training that would give them the skills both to get jobs, start their own businesses, and initiate their own projects as conscious players in the reconstruction and development of our country.
We know that those who want to start their own businesses, to earn a livelihood for themselves and create jobs for others, also hope that they will have access to the loans they need to start these businesses.
The masses of our people are also concerned that the most vulnerable in our society - the children, the youth, the women, the elderly and people with disabilities - should get focused support to ensure that they are not marginalised as we make progress in the effort to achieve a better life for all our people.
The people also want to live and work in conditions of safety and security and therefore want progress to be made to reduce such crimes as rape and the abuse of women and children, murder, robbery and assault.
The masses of our people are also very interested that we make progress to address the racial and gender disparities we inherited from the apartheid past, to create the non-racial and non-sexist society required by our Constitution.
They are committed to the pursuit and success of the moral regeneration campaign to contribute to the quality of life of all citizens and our society as a whole.
The January 8th Statement and the Local Government Election Manifesto contain the specific plans of the ANC and the broad democratic movement to respond to the aspirations of the people we have mentioned.
During the 2004 elections, we pledged to enter into a People's Contract to Create Jobs and Fight Poverty. To achieve this objective means that we have to ensure that as many of our people as possible should understand and accept the programmes we have elaborated, intended to respond to their needs and aspirations, and intended to mobilise them to participate in the process of their own development and upliftment.
This means that we ourselves, our members and supporters, should understand these programmes to enable us to explain them to the people. That is why, as I began to speak to you, I said that all of us must study and understand both the January 8th Statement and the Local Government Election Manifesto.
What we say in these documents about our commitment to continue to serve the people, builds on what we have achieved in the years since 1994, to respond to the needs and aspirations of the masses of our people.
Therefore we must remind the people that, as our Election Manifesto says:
"Although much more needs to be done, and although change has come faster to some areas than others, many communities around the country have seen positive change in the last five years: (These include that):
In our first democratic elections in 1994, the masses of our people elected the ANC, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, to govern our country. They did so because they were convinced that having faithfully led them in the struggle for liberation for 82 years, the ANC was their most trusted movement to lead them in the struggle to defeat poverty and underdevelopment.
Because of what we did to live up to this expectation, during the 1999 and 2004 elections, the people renewed our mandate to govern. They also confirmed this mandate in the 1995/6 and 2000 local government elections. In less than two months from now, on March 1st, once more the people will cast their votes to choose the governments that will take charge of our municipalities.
One of our principal tasks during this year of our 94th anniversary and the year of our 3rd local government elections is to ensure that once more the masses of our people renew our mandate to govern, as they have done since 1994.
Together, we must therefore say - let us mobilise for a decisive victory on March 1st! Let us all go out to ensure that on March 1st the ANC gains the support of our people to continue to govern at the local level!
But to gain that support, we must explain to the people what we intend to do to accelerate our work to address their needs and aspirations.
During the almost twelve years we have been in government, we have accumulated a lot of experience, and managed the economy so that we can generate the additional resources we need to be able to speed up our progress towards achieving the goal of a better life for all.
Our plans to accelerate the advance to the realisation of this goal are contained in our January 8th Statement and our Local Government Election Manifesto.
In our Manifesto we say that our Plan for Local Government, aims to:
This means that we see our municipalities playing a critical role in our continuing struggle to improve the lives of our people at an accelerated pace, building on the progress we have made over the last twelve years.
This means that we have to ensure that our municipal governments are properly empowered to discharge their heavy responsibilities. We have therefore committed ourselves to "ensure more resources and trained personnel are provided for local government."
Our commitment to improve the effectiveness of local government must also start with all our members who will be elected as Mayors and Councillors understanding the heavy responsibility that rests on their shoulders.
They must understand that we selected them as our candidate Mayors and Councillors to serve the people of South Africa and not to pursue their own private interests. We selected them expecting that they will work closely with the people in a People's Contract to Create Jobs and Fight Poverty, always listening and responding to the wishes and aspirations of the masses of our people, and empowering the people to participate in the development process.
Our Election Manifesto commits us to ensure that our Mayors and Councillors will indeed act as servants of the people. For this reason, all our candidate Mayors and Councillors have a duty to honour the Code of Conduct to which they have committed themselves.
The Manifesto says: "The ANC has a code of conduct, which all ANC local councillors must swear to uphold. The code requires all ward councillors to live in the community that elected them, and all councillors to work hard and to listen to the people.
"The code will serve as a guide to all councillors. Their work will be reviewed regularly to ensure that they meet their obligations. In that way, the ANC will ensure that councillors remain accountable to (the people)."
As part of the process of ensuring that we respond correctly to the fundamental perspective of our movement for gender equality and the emancipation of women, we have worked to ensure that our candidate lists for the forthcoming local government elections reflect that gender equality, making us the only political formation in the country to take this step, which is yet another measure we have introduced to deepen our democracy.
It is also clear that our municipalities will not be able to carry out their tasks without the active involvement and support of our provincial and national governments.
As the ruling party in the national government and all the provincial governments, our movement, the ANC, has therefore undertaken that it will ensure that the national and provincial governments do indeed work with all the municipal governments to improve their capacity to address the aspirations of the people.
The important task to ensure that our system of local government responds to the expectations of the people also puts definite obligations especially on the branches of the ANC.
Our branches must therefore act as an important instrument to strengthen our municipalities and deepen local democracy by ensuring that the Ward Committees work effectively and that the municipal councils and councillors interact and work regularly with the people in all the wards.
This means that, working together with the local structures of the Alliance and the rest of the democratic movement, the ANC branches themselves must radically improve their contact with the people in the wards in which they are based.
Our branches must truly be the political representative of the people in their wards, as well as the best defenders of the ANC municipal councils that our people will elect. Among other things, our branches must act as our frontline fighters against corruption, to ensure that nobody uses his or her position in government to steal from the people to line their pockets, for instance by giving contracts to their friends in return for kickbacks.
We must end the bad and unacceptable practice according to which members of some of our branches and Branch Executive Committees see themselves and act as an opposition to ANC councils and councillors, in the hope that they will be elected as Mayors and Councillors at the next elections.
All ANC members must therefore work very hard to consolidate our unity, to ensure that we work as a united movement to discharge our principal and central responsibility, which is to lead our people as we advance towards the achievement of the goal of a better life for all our people.
All our members and officials from our branches upwards must understand that none of us join the ANC and get elected to official positions in the movement so that we can occupy positions in government. We are members of the ANC to serve the people, with no expectation of any reward for ourselves.
Accordingly, all genuine members of the ANC, including those who will be elected as Mayors and Councillors, must respect the traditions and revolutionary morality of our movement exemplified by the youth who perished during the Soweto Uprising 30 years ago, and such patriots as Joe Gqabi, who was assassinated by apartheid agents in Zimbabwe 25 years ago, and the cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe who were murdered by the apartheid forces in Matola in Mozambique 25 years ago.
Because of the focus we are placing on the task of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our system of local government, our National Executive Committee has decided to designate this 94th anniversary year of the ANC as "The Year of Mobilisation for People's Power through Democratic Local Government".
During this year, through the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative, our movement and government will also pay particular attention to our economy as a whole, to ensure that it grows at a higher rate and in a manner that benefits especially the poor of our country. This will enable us to honour our obligation in terms of the People's Contract to Create Jobs and Fight Poverty.
We reiterate this commitment in the January 8th Statement to emphasise our determination to ensure that we move forward faster to reduce unemployment and poverty and generate the resources we need to improve the lives of our people through the provision of such amenities as housing, water, electricity, modern sewerage and health facilities, as well as the necessary education and training.
Everything I have said on behalf of the National Executive Committee of our movement means that we have entered into an important year for the ANC movement and our country. The masses of our people continue to depend on their tried and tested leader and representative, the ANC, to continue to lead them successfully as we build a new South Africa that truly belongs to all who live in it, united in their diversity.
As members and supporters of the ANC we therefore have a responsibility to ensure that we do not disappoint the expectations of the people. In united action, we have a duty to confirm to the masses of our people, both black and white, that in its 94th year, the "The Year of Mobilisation for People's Power through Democratic Local Government", the ANC remains determined loyally to serve the people of South Africa.
As I approach the end of this Address, I would like to take this opportunity once more to pay tribute to our leaders and cadres who passed away last year. These include Isithwalandwe Raymond Mhlaba, the Honoured Members of our National Orders, Allan Hendrickse, Lawrence Phokanoka and Sophie Mgcina, Christmas Tinto, and others mentioned in our January 8th Statement. We commit ourselves to honour their memory by following the example of self-sacrifice and loyalty to the people that they set.
Similarly, our movement pays tribute to the traditional leaders who passed away last year, including Queen Modjadji, King Mayitja III, and King Xolilizwe Sigcau, as well as former Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, and reiterate our condolences to their communities.
I now have the honour to announce and congratulate the recipients of the ANC Achievement Awards, representing those local leadership collectives that have excelled over the past year.
These structures have been chosen for their contribution, during the course of 2005, to the implementation of the 2005 programme and the realisation of the overall objectives of the ANC.
The Sol Plaatje Award, conferred on the best performing ANC branch, goes to the Lenasia Branch, Johannesburg Region, Gauteng.
The Charlotte Maxeke Award, conferred on the best performing ANC Women's League branch, goes to the Sepere Ratau Branch, Sekhukhune Region, Limpopo.
The runner-up in this category is the Joyce Ndinisa Branch, Dullah Omar Region, Western Cape.
The Anton Lembede Award, conferred upon the best performing ANC Youth League branch, goes to the Sobantu Branch, Greater Pietermaritzburg Region, KwaZulu Natal.
The runner-up in this category is the Ben Tshipi Branch, Siyanda Region, Northern Cape.
The ZK Matthews Award, conferred upon the best performing group of ANC councillors, goes to the councillors of the Boland District, Western Cape.
The runners-up in this category are the ANC councillors of the Capricorn District, Limpopo.
Forward to a resounding ANC victory in the March 1st local government elections!
Forward to the strengthening of People's Power through Democratic Local Government!
The ANC lives! The ANC leads!
Amandla ngawethu!