‘SA better now than under Apartheid’ – Mashatile tells ANC supporters in Free State

African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Paul Mashatile says progress has been made towards improving the lives of South Africans since the dawn of democracy despite some drawbacks.

Mashatile delivered a keynote address at the ANC’s election manifesto review rally in the Free State on Saturday.

The ANC has revised and reviewed some aspects of its 2019 manifesto in a bid to lure voters ahead of next year’s national elections

‘That wasn’t the case in 1994’

Although he acknowledged the shortcomings of the ANC-led government in the past 29 years, Mashatile said he believed the country was under much better conditions pre-1994.

“Today’s South Africa is profoundly better than South Africa under Apartheid. I don’t care about what people say… there are things we haven’t done right and we accept that, but this country is better than when it was under Apartheid,” he said.

Mashatile listed some of ANC’s successes and said there were other areas that still needed to be addressed.

“Today, 12 million South Africans have access to electricity. That wasn’t the case in 1994. We know the issue of load shedding is a problem, but we are fixing it.”

The ANC deputy president said the governing party’s main priorities was to fast-track land reform programme in the country.

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“More than 3.4 million hectares of land have been given to our people, but we know there’s still a long way to go. There is still a lot of work to do to distribute land, ensure land restitution in a faster pace. One of the responsibilities that the president has given me is to fast-track the issue of land reform, land restitution and land redistribution.

“I have gone throughout the country meeting traditional leasers, premiers, MECs, executive mayors and NGOs talking about the fact that we need to fast-track the issue of land so that our people can be able to get into agriculture and make sure that we have food security,” Mashatile said.

He said while at least 3.4 million houses have been built over the years, it was clear that housing was a big problem.

“There are those who haven’t received their houses. We haven’t forgotten about you. We know there are still any South Africans who lived in informal settlements and shacks, who don’t have adequate facilities in their areas [and] don’t have adequate services like water.”

Watch Mashatile’s speech below:

‘Accept criticism’

Mashatile said the manifesto review was necessitated by the ANC’s aim to improve and implement a number of key priorities.

“We understand as the leadership of the ANC that we haven’t done everything [we promised to do] and that’s why we wanted a manifesto review because we think it’s important you must a say in what you think is a success or a failure.

“You’ll remember that in the 2019 manifesto, we want to transform this economy to serve our people because the economy that we inherited was not there to serve all our people,” the ANC president continued.

He added the ANC needed to work together to ensure the future of South Africa would be better “than yesterday and today”.

“Go back to your branches, take this manifesto review with you [and] discuss it with your communities. Don’t be afraid to be criticised, accept criticism because through that we will build better communities.”

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