ANC

Twenty years ago we began a journey to eradicate the legacy of apartheid. It has been 20 years of freedom and democracy. The lives of our people have vastly improved and South Africa is a much better place than it was before 1994.

Over the last five years, the ANC has worked together with all South Africans to do more to fight poverty and unemployment and reduce inequality. Despite the negative global economic situation, we have built on the social gains achieved since 1994. More of our people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; we have created more jobs than before; expanded social grants, housing and basic services to our people; and further improved access to better education and health care.

Yet the challenges facing our country are immense. Poverty, inequality and unemployment still affect the lives of many people. Corruption continues to erode our social fabric and undermine our development efforts. Our economy continues to feel the effects of the global economic slowdown.

South Africa has begun a new and far-reaching phase of its democratic transition. This calls for bold and decisive steps to place the economy on a qualitatively different path. The National Development Plan (NDP) aims to eradicate poverty, increase employment, create sustainable livelihoods and reduce inequality by 2030.

MANIFESTO:

Build an inclusive economy that creates jobs

• Establish capacity in the state to do long-term planning, drawing where necessary on expertise that exists in wider society.
• Promote local procurement by directing the state to progressively buy at least 75% of its goods and services from South African producers and support small enterprises, co-operatives and broad-based empowerment.
• Accelerate the roll-out of the massive economic and social infrastructure programme – especially in energy, transport, ICT and water – to unlock economic opportunities, create jobs and improve people’s quality of life.
• Empower, educate and create jobs for youth through job placement and internship schemes, allocating 60% of employment in infrastructure and other projects for youth, and promoting youth employment and training incentive schemes.
• Promote investment and access to credit in the productive economy from the financial sector, including development finance institutions, through bolder and far-reaching reforms.
• Consolidate the public works programme, creating six million work opportunities by 2019. Many of which will be of long duration.
• Investigate the modality for the introduction of a national minimum wage as one of the key mechanisms to reduce income inequality.
• Enforce measures to eliminate abusive work practices in atypical work and labour broking.
• Promote decent work and strengthen measures to speed up employment equity

Transform our rural areas

• Implement rural development focusing on meeting basic needs, land reform and rural enterprise development, supported by localised markets, credit facilities and economic infrastructure.
• Increase investment in agricultural infrastructure in support of small-holder farmer development, prioritising former homeland communal areas.
• Expand the Food for All programme as part of the national integrated food and nutrition policy for procuring and distributing affordable essential foodstuffs directly to poor communities.
• Accelerate the settlement of remaining land claims submitted before the cut-off date of 1998, and re-open the period for lodgement of claims for restitution of land for a period of five years, starting in 2014

Ensure decent living conditions and sustainable human settlements

• Provide one million housing opportunities for qualifying households in urban and rural settlements over the next five years.
• Accelerate provision of basic services and infrastructure in all existing informal settlements.
• Increase the supply of affordable housing through mobilisation of housing allowances for teachers, nurses, police officers, office workers and many others in the gap market.
• Connect an additional 1.6 million homes to the electricity grid over the next five years.
• Continue work to achieve universal access to running water and decent sanitation

Improve and expand education and training

• Make two years of pre-school education compulsory; eradicate adult illiteracy; attend to teacher development; and further improve the quality of basic education up to the senior grade.
• Open two new universities, expand the FET college sector, with greater support and adequate funding for students and introduce compulsory community service for all graduates

Ensure quality health care for all

• Implement the next phase of the National Health Insurance (NHI) through the creation of a publicly funded and administered NHI Fund, strengthen and expand the free primary health care programme, improve management of public hospitals, and reduce the costs of private health care.
• Intensify the campaign against HIV and AIDS to ensure at least 4.6 million people receive antiretrovirals, and expand the male circumcision and HIV-counselling and testing programmes.
• Ensure chronic medication is available and delivered closer to where patients live, benefiting hundreds of thousands of South Africans.

2014 Election manifesto

Expand comprehensive social security

• Increase the supply of social service professionals, introduce mandatory cover for retirement, disability and survivor benefits, and continue to roll out existing social grants to those who qualify.
• Urgently finalise policy discussions on a comprehensive social protection policy that ensures no needy South African falls through the social security net.

Fight corruption and crime

• Intensify the fight against corruption in both the public and private sectors through measures to restrict public servants from doing business and holding public officials individually liable for losses arising from corrupt actions. We will pursue action against companies involved in bid rigging, price fixing and corruption in past and current infrastructure build programmes.
• Require any ANC member or ANC public representative found guilty before a court of law to step down from any leadership positions in the ANC, government and society.

Build a united nation and promote social cohesion

• Strengthen participatory democracy in workplaces, schools, hospitals and clinics, and in our communities.
• Promote a culture of dialogue, accords and commitments across society as part of our national effort to build a social compact for growth and development.
• Ensure public representatives are constantly in touch with the people and listen to people’s concerns and needs.

Our pledge

This manifesto is our pledge to move South Africa forward, together.

This manifesto sets out carefully considered and bold commitments that can be funded over the next five years and beyond. All levels of government will implement this manifesto, and we will ensure that it is effectively monitored.

While the ANC government will take a lead, each and every one of us – communities, workers, private sector and civil society – has a role to play in the implementation of the manifesto.

As the ANC, we further pledge to:

• Remain true to our values of courage, service, self-sacrifice, human solidarity, integrity, humility, honesty, hard-work, self-discipline and mutual respect.
• Work with our allies and the people to move South Africa forward through the commitments we have set out in this manifesto.
• Strengthen the bonds of trust and solidarity with our people where these have been broken and continue to listen to and effectively communicate with our people.
• Act against ANC members and ANC elected representatives found guilty in a court of law.
• The commitments of this manifesto are coherent, realistic and achievable. As the leading political representative of South Africans, with unmatched experience, capacity and political determination, the ANC will work to mobilise and unite all our people around this manifesto.

In the last 20 years

• From 1994 to the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis, we had the longest recorded period of uninterrupted economic growth, growing at twice the rate of the last 19 years of apartheid.
• Since 1994, five million more people are in work, with total employment at 14 million.
• Twice as many young people attended university and twice as many graduated in 2012 than in 1994.
• More than 1.4 million students have benefited from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
• The Public Works and Community Work programmes have created 6 million work opportunities for unemployed people, 40% of them young people.
• Nearly 5,000 farms, have been transferred to black people, benefiting over 200,000 families.
• Nearly 80,000 land claims, have been settled and 1.8 million people have benefited.
• The number of people receiving social grants increased from 3 million to 16 million.
• Over 3.3 million free houses have been built, benefiting more than 16 million people.
• About 12 million households have access to electricity, 7 million more than in 1994.
• Around 92% of South Africans have access to potable water, compared to 60% in 1996.

In the last 5 years

• The economy regained the one million jobs lost as a result of the 2008 global economic crisis. Employment is now higher than it has ever been.
• More than R1 trillion has been invested in national infrastructure projects, compared with R451 billion in the previous five years.
• The proportion of adults with access to banking services grew from 60% in 2009 to 75% in 2013.
• Nearly 500 informal settlements have been replaced with quality housing and basic services.
• The matric pass rate increased from 60.6% in 2009 to 78.2% in 2013.
• FET enrolments doubled from 345,566 in 2010 to 657,690 students in 2012.
• Loans and bursaries to poor students grew from 2.3 billion in 2008 to 8 billion in 2013.
• Over seven million learners are in no fee schools, up from five million in 2009.
• Teacher education has expanded—the number of new teacher graduates doubled from 6,000 in 2009 to 13,000 in 2012.
• Through the ‘prevention of mother to child transmission’ programme, the number of babies born HIV positive was reduced by 66% from 24,000 in 2008 to 8,200 in 2011.
• Average life expectancy increased by 4 more years to 60 years in 2012.

Party Leaders:

ANC-

Jacob Zuma – ANC president
Jacob Zuma was born in 1942 in Inkandla, KwaZulu-Natal. He became involved in politics at an early age, joining the ANC in 1959. He became an active member of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1962. While on his way out of the country in 1963, he was arrested with a group of 45 recruits near Zeerust, and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on Robben Island. After his release, Zuma helped mobilise internal resistance and was instrumental in the re-establishment of ANC underground structures in the then Natal between 1973 and 1975. He left South Africa in 1975 and became a member of the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) in 1977. By the end of the 1980s he was head of the ANC Intelligence Department. Following the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, he was one of the first ANC leaders to return to South Africa to begin the process of negotiations. In 1991, at the first ANC conference held in South Africa since 1959, he was elected the deputy secretary general. After the 1994 elections, Zuma was appointed MEC of economic affairs and tourism in KwaZulu-Natal. In December 1994, he was elected ANC national chairperson. He was elected ANC deputy president in December 1997. He served as deputy president of South Africa from 1999 to 2005. He was elected ANC president in December 2007. He was elected president in 2009 and inaugurated at the Union Buildings on 9 May 2009.

Cyril Ramaphosa – ANC deputy president
Cyril Ramaphosa was born in Soweto in 1952. He studied law at the University of the North, during which time he became involved in student politics and was detained by the apartheid police on two occasions. He worked as a law clerk before becoming a political activist and trade union leader, being elected the first secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. He later became the secretary general of the ANC in 1991 and formed part of the negotiations to end apartheid. Ramaphosa was elected a Member of Parliament in 1994, but resigned from politics in 1997 to move into the private sector. He was elected onto the ANC National Executive Committee in 2007, and in 2012 he was elected deputy president at the 53rd ANC national conference in Mangaung in 2012.

Gwede Mantashe – ANC secretary general
Gwede Mantashe was born in the rural Transkei. He joined the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) while working at Matla Coal in 1982. From 1985 to 1988 he was NUM regional secretary in Witbank, and then served as the union’s national organiser until 1993.From 1994 to 1998 he was NUM assistant general secretary, becoming general secretary in 1998. He stepped down from this position in May 2006, and was appointed an executive director at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). In 2007 he was elected chairperson of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and was elected ANC secretary general in December 2007 and re-elected in 2012. Like the deputy secretary general and treasurer general, Mantashe is based at ANC headquarters full-time.

Contact Details:

Website: www.anc.org.za and www.myanc.org
Telephone: 0867 177 077
E-mail: anchq@anc.org.za
Facebook: African National Congress
Twitter: ANC Info
Physical address: Chief Albert Luthuli House, 54 Sauer Street, Johannesburg
Postal address: PO Box 61884, Marshalltown, 2107