S.Africa's Mbeki vows war on crime, poverty

from Reuters

By Paul Simao

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki pledged to tackle poverty and crime, speed up land redistribution to blacks and fight AIDS in a speech on Friday that focused on the country's most glaring social ills.

Mbeki, halfway through his second and final term as president, acknowledged the government needed to do more to help millions of unemployed, poor and landless South Africans living on the sidelines of the country's fast-growing economy.

He outlined programs to spur employment through expanded public works projects, increase subsidized housing for the poor and implement a broad social security system designed mainly to help low-income workers.

"All these economic and social programs form part of our strategies to reduce and eradicate the poverty that continues to afflict many of our people," Mbeki said in a State of the Nation speech marking the opening of parliament in Cape Town.

The 64-year-old leader has been under pressure from powerful trade unions and his own divided African National Congress to improve life for ordinary South Africans, many of whom lack electricity, water and other basic services.

Improving social amenities has become a major demand on Mbeki's government, underlined by violent protests that erupted over the issue in mostly black townships last year.

Mbeki said the use of buckets to collect water and sewage, a common practice in townships and remote areas, was an "ugly and repulsive" fact that needed to be eradicated. Nearly a fifth of South Africa's 45 million people still have no clean water.

LAND FOR BLACKS

In one of his strongest statements yet on the controversial, racially tinged land reform issue, Mbeki said too many claims remained unresolved for those dispossessed under apartheid and colonial rule and that redistribution should be sped up.

Land redistribution is seen by the ruling ANC and its largely black constituency as a cornerstone of black majority rule, but for whites it evokes the specter of Zimbabwe-style land seizures and a collapse of the agriculture sector.

Analysts reacted quickly to his comments on the issue.

"Mbeki's comments that land reform needs to be speeded up are unlikely to be well-received by investors, although we don't believe there is any implication of the Zimbabwe-style land grabbing in his comments at all," Tania Kotsos of the Royal Bank of Canada said.

In his speech, Mbeki bowed to growing public pressure to tackle crime, amid widespread perceptions that the problem was spiraling out of control, especially in the country's economic hub Johannesburg, and charges Mbeki was in denial about the gravity of the problem.

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of violent crime and has been jarred by a series of sensational crimes, including the murder of a prominent South African historian.

Business leaders have expressed fears that violent crime, if left unchecked, could deter foreign investment and tourism in Africa's biggest economy and ruin the country's chances of successfully hosting the 2010 soccer World Cup.

Mbeki said the country had made progress in combating crime, though he acknowledged many people still lived in fear, "closeted behind walls and barbed wire".

"Decisive action will be taken to eradicate lawlessness, drug trafficking, gun running, crime and especially the abuse of women and children," Mbeki said.

Mbeki also said the government was committed to expanding programs to fight HIV and AIDS, which affects about 5 million South Africans.

(Additional reporting by Wendell Roelf)