The ANC national elective conference is a watershed moment as it will determine the future of the governing party and the direction SA takes in years ahead, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday.
Delivering the political report at the party’s national congress at Nasrec, south of Johannesburg, Ramaphosa said people wanted the ANC to emerge from the conference, which ends on December 20, “with clear and cogent solutions” to their socioeconomic challenges.
He said the conference theme, “Defend and advance the gains of freedom, unity through renewal”, called on delegates to pursue with “vigour the rebuilding and renewal of the ANC to advance transformation of our economy and society”.
“We go to this conference as an organisation that is rebuilding and renewing itself. This conference takes place when the ANC and SA are facing enormous challenges,” he said.
The ANC’s electoral support has been declining over the years, resulting in the loss of Gauteng’s three metros of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane to DA-led coalitions during the 2021 municipal elections. SA is dogged by slow economic growth, rampant corruption, violent crime and a high unemployment rate.
Ramaphosa said weaknesses in government, especially at local level, contributed to “crumbling infrastructure”, while the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality continued to be the “biggest stain on the development of our people”.
It was unacceptable that half of South Africans lived in poverty. There are about 60-million people in SA, which is one of Africa’s most industrialised economies.
Ramaphosa, who has been president since February 2018, bemoaned the fact that access to land, wealth, skills, basic services and opportunities “still reflect racial, gender and spatial inequality of the past”.
“There is a general recognition that peace and stability will remain elusive if we do not address the relationship between security and development,” he said.
Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader on an anti-corruption ticket during the party’s national congress in 2017.
Political pundits have said Ramaphosa’s re-election would enable him to continue with his reform agenda that has seen the rebuilding of state-owned enterprises and agencies such as the National Prosecuting Authority and the SA Revenue Service (Sars), among others.
The Brenthurst Foundation said in a report this week victory by the so-called radical economic transformation (RET) faction would result in a “rapid and precipitous decline” in SA’s finances, “investors will flee, sending the currency into freefall and causing hyperinflation, leading to economic collapse”.
On economic transformation, Ramaphosa said the structure, ownership, control and participation in the economy need to be “radically transformed to serve the interest of people of South Africa”.
“Economic transformation requires an economy that is growing and creating employment. It requires an economy in which new businesses are able to emerge and flourish, where black and women South Africans are able to advance at all levels and in all areas of the economy, and where township and rural economies are able to grow,” the ANC leader said.
While the economy had grown and created jobs and provided opportunities since 1994, “for much of the decade leading up to the 54th national conference in December 2017, the economy was characterised by low growth and higher levels of unemployment”.
Ramaphosa said the resolutions adopted at the party’s 2017 conference continue to guide the government’s economic programme. However, the progress it was making needed to be seen against the backdrop of the global economic slowdown, he said.
Read the ANC president's full address here
He said the economic programme was affected by measures his administration took to address Covid-19, stressing that as the pandemic subsided the Russia-Ukraine conflict disrupted the global supply chain, resulting in food prices going up. “The [July 2021] unrest that we went through also contributed to our economic woes. Inflation has soared,” said Ramaphosa.
“The sound macroeconomic reform agenda that we are diligently executing, as well as the strengthening of Sars and the gains it is making in tax revenues occasioned by positive terms of trade, should give us confidence that our fiscal position is set to return to a firmer footing over the medium term. The macroeconomic stability we have fostered has given us a strong platform to enable the economy to grow going forward.”
Ramaphosa, who was drowned out by disgruntled delegates who chanted “load-shedding” when he took to the podium, said poor policy decisions in the past, mismanagement, state capture and corruption had left SA’s electricity system “in a state of real despair”.
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