It is vital to return to the grass roots and develop locales of people-centred power. The ANC says this and means it, even if government as such fails to do this. In respect of the creation of people-centred institutions, we fought hard yet lost the battle to develop NGO type institutions. This was generally not accepted by the cabinet because they saw themselves as an elected government who had the mandate to carry out policies of transformation. Too many did not realise the difference between government and civil society.
Civil society needs to be strengthened.
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has also acknowledged that we have to change the GEAR targets, because we have not reached them. Here we must not under-estimate the international environment, which has smashed our economy. Manuel, and thus the government, is under enormous pressure from international currency markets. Despite this, we are more stable than Asia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico etc. I believe the error made in some other African countries was to create an overstrain in the system which meant they could not sustain their economies at all.