 SACP
response to President Zuma’s State of Nation Address
Let’s remain focused on our key strategic priorities 12 January 2010 The SACP has welcomed both the inclusive tenor and broad content of President Zuma’s state of nation address to Parliament on Thursday evening. Using the occasion of the 20th anniversary of former President Mandela’s release from prison, President Zuma quite deliberately and appropriately chose not to turn the occasion into an exclusively national or even narrow ruling party celebration. He underlined the global significance of the anniversary. He saluted former apartheid-era political prisoners from neighbouring countries and from the international anti-apartheid movement, and he generously acknowledged the role in our transition of a wide range of South Africans from across the political spectrum. In doing so, we believe that President Zuma was not just looking back on the past. He was emphasising that in this Year of Action all South Africans have a responsibility for rallying around the key priorities of our society. We hope (perhaps vainly) that parliamentary opposition parties and the media will have grasped this absolutely fundamental point. It is easy in politics to become diverted by many insignificant and even some significant but ultimately passing, peripheral issues and debates. This year’s state of nation address stuck steadfastly to the big issues that concern the great majority of working-class and poor South Africans – jobs, improving education and health-care, rural development, and fighting the scourge of crime and corruption. The SACP, in particular, welcomes the President’s commitment to sustaining and expanding government’s multi-year, multi-billion rand infrastructure programme. The infrastructure programme was begun before the global recession but it became our principal contra-cyclical response to it. While noting some heartening signs of economic recovery, President Zuma quite correctly signalled government’s intention to keep this critical programme going. The recession, as the President noted, brought to an end 17 years of growth. However, that growth itself had serious systemic flaws – in particular, it reproduced extraordinarily high levels of structural unemployment and inequality. As our economy shows signs of recovery, it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow ourselves to be satisfied with another decade-and-a-half of growth that continues to reproduce such gross distortions. We have to place our country on to a different developmental trajectory. In this regard the SACP welcomes the brief indications that the state of nation address provided on government’s Industrial Policy Action Programme. The SACP looks forward to hearing more detail and engaging with the IPAP in the coming weeks. There was much else in the address that began to signal important progressive shifts in government policy. Among such shifts was the emphasis the President placed on rural productivity and household food security, moving away from a sometimes inordinate focus on a rights-based and restorative process (as important as that still is). In the coming weeks and months, and whatever the peripheral noise, the SACP pledges to work on the ground amongst our people to ensure that we all remain focused on the key strategic priorities of our society, as outlined in President Zuma’s address to the nation. Issued by the SACP Contact: Malesela Maleka SACP Spokesperson – 082 226 1802 -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
