Cape Town — South African President Thabo Mbeki has opened a landmark policy conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) by defending his policies against criticism from the left and the movement from accusations that it is consumed by struggles for power and personal advantage.
The ANC national policy conference, which opened on Wednesday at Midrand, located between Johannesburg and Pretoria, is scheduled to debate behind closed doors a wide range of policy positions as the party prepares itself for elections in 2009.
The conference comes six months ahead of a national conference at which decisions will be made to determine who becomes Mbeki's successor as president of South Africa. The country's constitution requires him to step down at the end of this, his second term as president.
In his address to the policy conference, Mbeki addressed head-on recent attacks on the government's economic policies, saying that "it is not possible to solve problems that have been 350 years in the making in a mere 13 years of democratic rule."
The country still suffers endemic poverty, underdevelopment and "unacceptably high levels of structural unemployment," he said, but the ANC government had placed the economy on a "relatively high" growth path and "immensely strengthened" its global competitiveness.
"We have generated public sector resources that have helped enormously to cushion millions of our people from the terrible impact of abject poverty. This includes our capacity to empower our people to set themselves up as independent producers, not forced to bow to the will of the major owners of capital in our country and the rest of the world."
Responding to attacks from the left, he made clear that although the ANC believed South Africa's working class occupied a "strategic position" in society, the movement was not a socialist party.
It respected the right of its allies in the South African Communist Party (SACP) to work for a socialist revolution. "The ANC has never sought to prescribe to the SACP the policies it should adopt, the programmes of action it should implement, and the leaders it should elect." Similarly, "the SACP has therefore not seen and acted against the ANC as its political competitor, which we are not."
"I mention these matters," he added, "because in the recent past suggestions have been made that the ANC has not eradicated the legacy of 350 years of colonialism and apartheid because [we]… have not adopted what some have characterised as socialist policies."
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Referring to media speculation that the policy conference would be dominated by the issue of his successor as president, Mbeki attacked what he called "a sustained barrage of propaganda" suggesting that ANC members wanted power to accumulate wealth and dispense patronage.
Those responsible, he added, "have acted in the most determined manner to define the agenda of this policy conference and the atmosphere that should surround our proceedings. They have sought to ensure that… it is not issues of policy that should occupy our minds, but the so-called leadership succession."
But the conference had "absolutely nothing to do with who is or will be a leader of the African National Congress."
In other remarks, Mbeki:
- Attacked protesters and strikers who had used force resulting in "violent assaults against the people, intimidation in various forms, looting and destruction of property," and
- Said the conference should deal with media concerns about press freedom "as well as issues that relate to the responsibility and public accountability of the media."
Full text of Mbeki's address:
