President Thabo Mbeki pledged Friday to raise the standard of living of the poorest in South Africa and to reinvigorate the economy.
In a sober and conciliatory address to the nation at the opening of parliament, he admitted that poverty remained too high and economic growth too low.
Domestic problems such as unemployment and underdevelopment dominated the president's address as he went back to basics after a year of weathering criticism of his questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS and his "softly softly" approach to turmoil in neighboring Zimbabwe.
"The reality remains that our rate of growth is still too low as are the aggregate savings and investment rates," he said. "Similarly the levels of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment ... are too high."
"We have decided that this year the government must make a decisive and integrated contribution towards meeting the economic challenges the country faces."
Mbeki promised reforms to bring down the cost of South African labor without cutting wages, as well as plans to develop skills and relax immigration laws to import expertise.
He threw his own oft-stated notion of South Africa as a country of two nations -- one white and one black -- to the wind and praised whites, whereas last year he lashed out at them.
"Outwardly we are a people of many colors, races, cultures, languages and ancient origins," he said. "Yet we are tied to one another by a million visible and invisible threads.
"Together we are human, we are South African, we are African," he said, ignoring white anger at a "one-sided" tableau put on outside parliament Friday to depict the oppression black South Africans had suffered.
Mbeki paid "tribute to all our people, both black and white" who have helped "move our country further away from its painful past," singling out whites who had apologized for apartheid.
He even held out a hand to white Afrikaner farmers -- arguably his biggest critics -- and thanked them for helping to uplift blacks.
As he focused on ways to "ensure a better life for all our people" -- the task Nelson Mandela had left for him -- Mbeki called on "our people across the color line to build unity."
With his predecessor in the public seats, Mbeki said a million houses had been built and a million jobs created since the end of apartheid in 1994, but that much work remained.
He said government would now "move to a higher phase with regard to rural development" and named 13 municipalities where development programmes would start soon.
He admitted that "unfortunately, I cannot say the same for urban renewal programmes" and announced only two projects, one of them a 1.3-billion-rand (165-million-dollar / 179-million-euro) effort to bring schools, services and policing to Johannesburg's Alexandra township, considered the most dangerous in the country.
Mbeki highlighted crime as a major impediment to better living standards and promised to recruit 30,000 reservists for high-crime areas and lift a moratorium on releasing crime statistics by June.
He said government would "assess problems with regard to the fight against corruption" and possibly expand the country's anti-corruption units.
But he made no mention of a raging controversy over alleged graft by government officials in sealing deals to buy 43 billion rand worth of arms from European manufacturers and a decision to shut down the country's foremost anti-corruption watchdog.
Mbeki likewise steared clear of his biggest policy controversy to date -- his questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS -- saying the government would combat all other infectious diseases as well.
Opposition leader Tony Leon lamented this ommission.
"Two-hundred-and-fifty thousand South Africans have died of AIDS and there was not a single proposal aimed at dealing with this disease destroying our country," he said, adding that Mbeki had been "particularly weak" on crime.
But the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB) said it was "heartened" by Mbeki's emphasis on economic growth and national unity.
"In the past, most commentary in government speeches has been around macroeconomic reform and meeting international requirements," SACOB chief executive Kevin Wakeford said.
"This speech shifted to the imperative of economic growth, which was lacking in the past." -- CAPE TOWN (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
