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President Jacob Zuma has used this year’s Freedom Day commemoration to again affirm the governing party’s commitment to permanently changing the economy, saying government would do whatever was necessary to achieve economic freedom for the majority.
Zuma told the gathering, held at crime-ridden Manguzi near the KwaZulu-Natal/Mozambique border, that his government would also use all available legislative means to address the issue of land hunger.
After outlining the progress made by successive ANC administrations over the past 23 years, Zuma said there was “further work to be done”.
“We have achieved political freedom but economic freedom still remains largely elusive. It is for this reason that we speak about radical economic transformation,” Zuma said.
Zuma said South Africans needed to understand the idea of radical economic transformation, which he defined as “fundamental change in the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership, management and control of the economy in favour of all South Africans, especially the poor, the majority of whom are African and female.”
Zuma said that the majority of black people were still economically disempowered and “dissatisfied by the economic gains from liberation”.
White households earned at least five terms more than black households while only 10% of the top 100 companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange were black owned. These changes in ownership had principally been achieved through black empowerment deals, while the pace of transformation of private sector workplaces was slow.
Zuma said government was “very much aware of our people’s quest for land” and would “use all available instruments necessary in expediting land restitution and respond to land hunger”.
The ANC’s policy conference in June would, he said, deal with the issue of expropriation of land without compensation.
At the same time Zuma welcomed the fact that the World Economic Forum would be holding a sitting in Durban next week saying his government looked forward to hosting global captains of industry influential decision-makers from all over the world.
ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairperson and acting premier, Sihle Zikalala, said the government needed to speed up the pace of changing the economy.
Zikalala said the current policy of willing buyer willing seller had failed and that land now had to be expropriated.
Zuma said that the defeat of apartheid colonialism had been “one of the greatest achievements of humankind”.
Turning to local issues affecting resident of Manguzi and other parts of the Mhlabuyingana Municipality, which falls under the uMkhanyakude District, Zuma said the police station would be upgraded and a court built at Jozini.
Cross-border crime was being discussed with the Mozambican authorities, and the cellphone networks were being pushed to improve network, which would assist in both reporting and fighting crime.
Provincial government had assisted in providing the South African Police Service with vehicles, while the national defence force had increased troop numbers and patrol frequency in the border area.
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