ANC President Jacob Zuma has repeated that children who drop out of school should be educated by force, young girls who fell pregnant should be separated from their babies until they were educated, and the law be changed so that criminals were denied bail.
On the campaign trail in the Western Cape at the weekend, Zuma repeated the views which he said stemmed from the ANC national conference in Polokwane in December when his party found that after 14 years of democracy the nation faced still faced many serious problems.
"The fact that there are so many criminals - there are men who do not respect women and children - means there is something wrong. We decided that the government must take charge of educating the nation so we could move away from disrespect," he told a women's gathering in Gugulethu on Sunday.
Zuma called for a return to values where children were taught respect, where adults treated all children as their own and there were no street children.
"We must go back to teaching. Go (tell everyone) it is going to be compulsory . We are going to make sure that no child is going to loiter around during school time. They are the citizens of tomorrow.
"You don't build a nation by talking, you build a nation by educating. If a child does not go to school, he must be taught by force until he gets a degree. We return him to his parents as a person who has been developed," he said as he sought the women's backing.
He said another problem to be tackled was schoolgirls who fell pregnant and young mothers who left their babies with relatives while they exploited social grants.
"We want to end this so that we can be a nation that has values. If we are a serious nation, we must take hard decisions. Nobody will helps us but ourselves."
Zuma said current legislation was too soft on criminals and that: "It takes a lot of effort to prove he is a criminal. The law says he's a suspect, but we (saw) him kill a person."
The essence of his message was aired later at rallies in Philippi and Langa. At the Langa rally, attended by about 4 500 people, many bused in from other areas, Zuma spoke at length about the ANC's history and claimed it was the only party that could bring freedom to the masses.
He said the ANC rebels numbered only a few hundred and not thousands as they have claimed.
Zuma urged people to vote for his party next year and said the ANC wanted to increase its majority. As with his previous meetings, Zuma whipped up the crowd with his trademark song Umshini wam before he left the podium.