LISTEN Ramaphosa: ANC’s history no guarantee of votes
President Cyril Ramaphosa says the days when South Africans voted for the African National Congress (ANC) because of its role in the struggle against apartheid are long gone.
He believes the time has come for the ANC to focus on the country’s future.
Ramaphosa addressed the ANC’s 2019 elections manifesto workshop in Irene on Monday.
He told delegates that the ANC needs to campaign for votes based on what the party has done for South Africans and its plans for the country over the next five years.
“The manifesto we are meeting to discuss today must therefore be firmly focused on the future, knowing very well that a very firm and good foundation was build and set out in the past. But we cannot dwell on that past, we must craft a manifesto that will take us to the future and focus on that future.”
ANC delegates and National Executive (NEC) members will work on different areas of the manifesto including economic transformation, land reform, health and social security and crime and corruption.
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The manifesto document will implement the resolutions taken at the ANC’s national conference in December.
“We should make it clear that the manifesto will not be a survey of South African opinions. It will describe a program of action that befits an organization like the ANC, which is a disciplined force of the left with a clear working class bias. Like the Freedom Charter, the manifesto which we will present to the country in 2019 will be a revolutionary document that is committed to transformation. It will be a document of radical and socio-economic transformation,” said Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa cautioned that the manifesto needs to speak to the challenges faced by the youth as the majority of votes will come from South Africans under the age of 40.