Comrades,
The ANC has opened the process for public inputs towards our Manifesto for 2009 General Elections, and I think we are all ought contribute towards ensuring that we emerge with a formidable programme that addresses key service delivery issues for all our people. This presents us an opportunity to reverse the legacy of the 1996 Class Project which has turned the masses of our people, particularly the poor and the working class, against our movement. This is in line with the culture of our movement of involving everyone in determining service delivery priorities for our country, unlike with the approach of the 1996 Class Project which relied largely on the so-called "consultants, experts and intellectuals". It is time that we reposition the ANC as the true "disciplined force of the left", by focusing its mandate towards addressing the needs of the majority and poor primarily. This will be in line with the progressive resolutions that began to take the centre stage during the ANC Policy Conference and the Polokwane National Conference last year, both events which ushered-in the defeat of the ideology represented by the 1996 Class Project in favour of the pro-poor policies. The recent Alliance Economic Summit further reaffirmed this progressive policy shift within the ANC. The past couple of years have seen the steady fading of mass confidence in our popular democratic government's ability to deliver to the needs of the majority and the poor. This observation is informed by, amongst many other things, declining voter turn-out amongst our people, popular mass demonstrations against our government structures at various levels, research statistics showing loss of confidence on government by the people, etc. There are several contributory factors that one can allude to, as attributing towards this perceived declining levels of public confidence in our democratic government, such as: *Over centralization of governance, at the exclusion of the participation by the people*. The masses of our people were starting to feel marginalized in decision-making processes, particularly on issues that directly affected their lives. The case of Khutsong, Moutse and many others can serve as a perfect example for this argument. Under the 1996 Class Project, public participation was relegated for the purposes of satisfying the legislative requirements, and the inputs obtained through this process were not considered when decisions where taken. The so-called specialists, experts and intellectuals were at the driving seat of policy and decision-making in our country. *Subjective Black Economic Empowerment,* which mainly benefitted key politicians, such as the Lekota's, Shilowa's, Ngcuka's, Maduna's, and unscrupulous government officials and their relatives. This concept has never really made a desirable impact in terms of its intended objective of contributing towards poverty alleviation, unemployment, etc. It has instead contributed towards furthering the skewed distribution of our country's economic resources, by creating a few black millionaires who amassed resources to show-off amongst the poor people. This has indeed created enemies for our movement from amongst the poor people. *Poor state of service delivery.* We must acknowledge the progress made with regard to the improvement of service delivery in our country since the inception of democracy, but we should equally acknowledge that we could have done better with much more commitment amongst government officials, efficient management of public resources, and passion for the betterment of the lives of the poor. *Unacceptably high levels of corruption within government structures.*Corruption has become an open secret within our government structures, and this is as a result of unholy collaboration between the greedy government officials and the business sector. We have not been, and still are not able to deal effectively with corruption that has engulfed our government, which leads to the distortion of our inability to deliver effective service delivery. The ANC must come out with guns blazing in dealing with the corrupt elements within our government structures. We need to deploy a cadre with a passion to serve, other than those with ambitions to become over-night millionaires. Like Cde Zuma said when addressing the comrades in the Free State recently *"we should deal effectively with corruption within government, even if that means loosing some of our comrades".* *Preference of loyalty as opposed to capacity when deploying comrades in strategic positions of responsibility within government.* This is the direct legacy of the 1996 Class Project, which sought to sideline all those who demonstrated a certain level of independent thinking in favour of their cronies and relatives. We need to develop a layer of effective politicians and bureaucrats that will contribute effectively towards the improvement of governance in our country. The ANC must be centrally involved in the deployment processes of both the politicians and key government bureaucrats to avoid appointments to serve certain individuals as opposed to serving the system. Comrades, the list is endless, but I believe that we should fundamentally break away from the legacy of the 1996 Class Project. We should take the ANC back to the people, like in the era of Luthuli, Tambo, Mandela, etc. Amandla! *By: Steve Mamphekgo* --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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. 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