Marianne Merten
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma – dubbed “Mr Action” by his ANC deputy Cyril Ramaphosa when the party toured KwaZulu-Natal before outlining its political programme for the year – has his work cut out in both the party and the government.
This is the last of the five years between elections for the ANC to showcase delivery on its five priorities – jobs, education, health, crime and corruption, land and rural reform. But the president’s administration was sucker-punched when Amplats announced 14 000 retrenchments just days after Zuma called for a social compact, particularly in mining, where “the extraction of minerals should not disadvantage workers, local communities or the environment”, but “create safe and decent jobs”.
The ANC national executive committee (NEC) lekgotla at the end of the month is to put the final touches to a political programme expected to pull together concrete deliverables.
Mobilisation for this would fall to NEC member and Gauteng Premier Nomvula “Mama Action” Mokonyane, after Zuma sets the tone in his State of the Nation Address on Valentine’s Day.
A delivery jamboree this year would make the 2014 national election campaign so much easier for the ANC, which despite being by far the biggest party, has expressed concern over its stagnant electoral performance in all provinces but KwaZulu-Natal.
So the pressure is on.
Having publicly promised the implementation of legislative changes to South Africa’s land restitution and ownership before the year is out, Zuma must now ensure ANC MPs in Parliament pick up the pace to make it happen in the centenary year of the 1913 Natives Land Act.
If legislative changes to replace the willing seller, willing buyer approach with the just and equitable principle and reopen the process for land claims stemming from before the 1913 cut-off date are not submitted by mid-year, it is unlikely they would be finalised before the House rises at the end of the year.
The tight parliamentary timetable is traditionally dominated in the first six months by the opening of Parliament and the 38 votes on departmental budgets, following the finance minister’s Budget announcement. Resuscitating the Expropriation Bill could be a shortcut. It was gazetted in April 2008 by the Public Works Department “to provide for the expropriation of property, including land, in the public interest or for public purposes and subject to compensation” and to establish expropriation advisory boards, but was withdrawn after months of heated engagement and public hearings in provinces.
It is understood a refined version of the bill was heading back to Parliament in late 2011, as the parliamentary public works committee had requested, but the draft law has seemingly not been scheduled on the parliamentary calendar since. Coincidentally, still on the statute books is the apartheid-era 1975 Expropriation Act, which gives the public works minister power “to expropriate property for public and certain other purposes”, among others.
But the pressure to deliver and implement is not only on the emotive and sensitive land matter, where questions continue to hang over tenure or ownership rights in areas under control of traditional leaders, but also in the ANC-led government’s flagship R800 billion infrastructure programme. Talk of renewing the rail rolling stock dates back to 2011, but receipt of new coaches and locomotives is pending only now, while the sod-turning for the Umzimvubu Dam has been on hold since the project was first talked about two years ago.
With all pupils back in class this week, several storm-damaged schools were found to have been left unrepaired in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, where the eradication of almost 500 mud schools remain elusive despite such talk since early 2011.
Mr Action will also have his hands full at the ANC’s Luthuli House head office, but action may be constrained by political sensitivities cross-cutting party and state, like the proposed review of provinces which could impact on premiers, MECs and other party power brokers. The Mangaung conference resolved the review should be finalised before the 2019 elections so that, if there were to be any changes, they would be in effect from that poll. However, it remains to be seen if Mr Action lives up to the spin.