Government+urged+to+heed+ANC+policy,+Moshoeshoe+Monare,+Star

The Star, Johannesburg, October 02, 2006 //Edition 1//
=Government urged to heed ANC policy=


 * Moshoeshoe Monare**

The ANC secretary-general, Kgalema Motlanthe, says President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet is deviating from policies and unilaterally taking decisions without accounting to the party. He warned that if this continued, service delivery would suffer.

He was speaking to ANC delegates during the party's Limpopo provincial general council outside Polokwane on Saturday.

Motlanthe's criticism bordered on questioning the integrity of the cabinet. He challenged the government about its deviation from policy and cited the example of the regional electricity distributors (REDs). The alliance agreed there would be half-a-dozen REDs subsidised by the state in order to electrify every village in the country.

"But then … the cabinet issued a statement in September last year that the decision is to establish six REDs attached to the metros and then add the seventh one, which would look at the poorer areas.

"Now that's deviation from the agreed position. There may very well be good reasons, but those reasons must come back into the movement for discussion so that we can all understand them. But that didn't happen … There's always a possibility of deviation from policy formulation and adoption and the implementation."

In what could be interpreted as a stern warning to the government, Motlanthe said such deviation would affect service delivery. "If we go that route, there will be villages that will be without electricity, there will be villages whose electricity gets cut in the process," he said.

He urged the government to emulate the National Party's biased service delivery towards whites in the past in order to accelerate service delivery towards the poor.

"In the past it did not matter whether the homestead of this white farmer is there on a hill - at night there will be electricity and running water. Everywhere, even in the remotest corner of the country, the NP was able to do that. And I am saying our government ought to be able to do that because we have agreed as a matter of policy that we will electrify the whole country," he argued.

He said that if the government continued to disregard policy, the ANC wouldn't be able to achieve its target and meet the Freedom Charter goals by 2012.

Motlanthe reminded the government that ANC comrades deployed to government positions were politically accountable to the ANC.

"They take their directions from the policies of the ANC … and the ANC - as a liberation movement - is taking its cue from the people, and must always be the one to identify bottlenecks."

Motlanthe's challenge to the government comes a few months after the SA Communist Party and Cosatu accused the Mbeki government of marginalising the alliance and reducing Motlanthe to an administrator responsible for unilaterally implementing unfriendly policies.


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3466573**

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