Johannesburg — THE African National Congress (ANC) flexed its muscles at the weekend, setting an agenda it said the government must deliberate on at its cabinet lekgotla, which starts tomorrow .

The party's national executive committee (NEC) said yesterday it would keep an eye on the extent to which the ANC's immediate social and political programme, which the party fine-tuned at a three-day meeting at the weekend, would filter into government programmes this year.

Yesterday's call was the first concrete sign that the party wanted to reassert its authority over government - a process most political analysts say could result in bad blood between it and President Thabo Mbeki's administration.

Mbeki and his cabinet gather this week to thrash out the key political, social and economic priorities, which Mbeki will announce in his state of the nation speech in Parliament next month.

Mbeki's speech will be the first real indication whether the new guard in the ANC NEC has been able to convince the government of the priorities it set in its five-year programme.

Mbeki and the entire cabinet are due to attended the lekgotla.

"The lekgotla confirmed the long-established principle that the ANC is the strategic political centre that directs and guides its employees in various centres," ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said.

Yesterday, the party called on Mbeki to develop a "national response plan, whose single-minded focus was to keep the electricity flowing". SA is experiencing crippling electricity blackouts, which are negatively affecting economic growth.

The party's new spokeswoman, Jessie Duarte, said one of the urgent issues the ANC wanted the government to deal with was the electricity crisis.

"The ANC will embark on a campaign to put out a message to our people. The government will have to look into alternatives such as solar heating and incentives for business for such new methods.

"We need legislation around light bulb usage; we have to encourage switching off certain implements during specific times . The important thing is that the government has heard our concerns," Duarte said.

While Mantashe remained tightlipped about the specific role party deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe will be playing within

the government, the ANC's national chairwoman, Baleka Mbete, made it clear that the ANC expected the government not only to listen, but also to implement its decisions.

On economic transformation, the ANC outlined a bold plan to mobilise for socio- economic change, which included the creation of what it called decent work, the energy crisis, rising food prices and food insecurity, rural development, land reform and agrarian change, as well as local development.

"The issue of food prices was identified as a major priority. A range of measures, including the full use of competition policy and a pro-active stance by the Competition Commission, other government interventions and popular mobilisation, will be needed to ensure that food-price escalation is addressed to achieve our economic goals," Mantashe said.

The party also wants the government to commit more resources to education, the improvement of school infrastructure and the adoption of a set of non-negotiable s by teachers, students and other role players.

The ANC also reiterated its call for the government to integrate the Scorpions into the South African Police Service and dismissed the notion that it was doing so because of the Scorpions' criminal case against ANC president Jacob Zuma.