SACP+on+2006+State+of+the+Nation+Address+by+Pres+Mbeki




 * Friday, 03 February 2006**

=SACP statement on President Mbeki’s 2006 “State of the Nation Address”=

The SACP welcomes the broad strategic perspectives elaborated by President Mbeki in his “State of the Nation Address” to Parliament today. These strategic perspectives are underpinned by a commitment from government to prioritise accelerated /shared/ growth.

The SACP understands this vision to mean a growth path that begins to be qualitatively different from the existing growth trajectory. President Mbeki has, quite correctly, noted that our nearly twelve “years of freedom have been very good for business.” It is now time to ensure that socially and economically the benefits of freedom are greatly expanded.

This year’s State of Nation address reflects and consolidates many important areas in which there has been a welcome and growing economic policy convergence among the ANC’s alliance partners. In particular, the commitment to fostering an economically active, developmental state (in all three spheres of government); the prioritisation of halving poverty and unemployment by 2014; and the use of state owned enterprises as key catalysers for infra-structural investment.

The SACP also notes with approval the acknowledgement that key areas (in which we have been campaigning) are critical for the success of sustainable and accelerated shared growth. We warmly welcome, for instance, the President’s commitment, on behalf of government, to review the “willing selling, will buyer” formula in regard to land reform; the speeding up of land restitution; and the commitment to more effectively harmonising land and agrarian reform with provincial and local government integrated planning.

The SACP also welcomes the implicit impatience expressed by the President with the financial sector for its dragging of heels in regard to releasing R42 billion set aside for housing, as agreed upon at the Financial Sector Summit. The importance of building cooperatives and of ensuring that small and micro businesses have more access to capital are other key themes emphasised by the address.

The past decade of sustained economic growth has, indeed, been very good for business. The SACP believes that this growth will not be sustainable if it is not a significantly more shared growth. Sharing must not be an after-thought, a trickle down. It must be integrated into the growth path itself – through skills training, through land reform that assures household sustainability, through infrastructure that addresses not just big business needs, but also the needs of micro-businesses, co-ops, and poor communities, and through projects that are labour intensive. But this will not happen spontaneously – an active, developmental state, and the ongoing mobilisation and vigilance of communities, trade unions and progressive social forces is essential.

The SACP pledges itself to be an active partner in the struggle for accelerated, sustainable, shared growth.

As much as we welcome all these positive messages from the State of the Nation Address, we however, remain convinced that one of the biggest weaknesses in government’s economic initiatives is the absence of an overarching industrial strategy.


 * Issued by: SACP

CONTACT: Kaizer Mohau, Media Liaison Officer, South African Communist Party (SACP), Tel: 011 339 3621/2, Fax: 011 339 4244/6880, Fax2email: 086 613 5646, Mobile: 076 573 7764

Email: kaizer@sacp.org.za mailto:kaizer@sacp.org.za Web portal: www.sacp.org.za http://www.sacp.org.za/ **