Mbeki hails decade of democracy
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Mbeki meets party members near Pietermaritzburg last week.
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Reuters) -- President Thabo Mbeki hailed South Africa's triumphant first decade of democracy on Friday and pledged to forge ahead with policies to fight poverty and unemployment ahead of new polls expected in March or April.
Mbeki, whose ruling African National Congress (ANC) is forecast to score another solid victory, told the opening of parliament his government was on the right course to fulfil the visions outlined by anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.
"During the first decade we have made great progress towards the achievements of the goals we enunciated as we took the first steps as a newborn child," Mbeki told a glittering audience of legislators and diplomats in Cape Town. "We also laid a strong foundation to score even greater advances."
Mbeki listed South Africa's victories since the end of white rule in 1994, from building some 1.6 million new houses for the country's poor to a stable fiscal policy which ended decades of double digit inflation to the current level of four percent.
But he gave short shrift to two of the nation's greatest concerns: AIDS and political meltdown in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
As in earlier years, he glossed over South Africa's devastating AIDS epidemic, noting merely that AIDS and other health issues were a "serious concern."
South Africa has the world's highest HIV/AIDS caseload with an estimated 5.3 million people infected. But Mbeki's government has been accused of moving far too slowly against the disease, agreeing only last year to roll-out anti-retroviral drugs in the public sector -- although this has not yet started.
Mbeki said South Africa remained committed to "building a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Africa."
But he did not mention problems in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where he has been accused of taking too soft a line on President Robert Mugabe's crackdown after his disputed 2002 re-election.
Short on specifics
He said the ANC government would continue to push forward existing policies "to extricate all our people from the social conditions that spell loss of human dignity."
He said he did not "foresee that there will be any need for new and major policy initiatives" over the next 10 years.
"The task we will all face during the decade ahead will be to ensure the vigorous implementation of these policies, to create the winning, people-centred society of which Nelson Mandela spoke," Mbeki said as the 85-year-old former president looked on from the visitors' gallery.
Mbeki's speech was short on specifics, saying that more detailed plans would be unveiled after the election.
But he said the government would move vigorously to implement established policies such as the urban renewal and rural development programme, an expanded public works programme aimed at creating jobs, and the expansion of micro-credit.
Ten years after the end of apartheid South Africa remains plagued by unemployment of more than 30 percent and one of the most unequal distributions of wealth in the world, with economic power still largely in white hands.
Mbeki is expected to announce a date next week for the country's third democratic elections. Political polls indicate his ANC is likely to score another two-thirds majority in parliament, giving him another five year term.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
