In his Opening Address to the ANC Policy Conference at the Gallagher Estates in Johannesburg on 26 June last year, Jacob Zuma said: Yet what NUMSA stated is in fact broadly in line with, and reinforces, ANC President Jacob Zuma's own well-known characterisation of the key outcome of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), almost in the exact terminology used by Irvin Jim and NUMSA to define NDP. To some amongst us, the ugly, public outburst of the NPC and Trevor Manuel against NUMSA came like a bolt from the blue. It accused Irvin Jim of "infantile disorder" and "an extreme aversion to anything rational." The response of the National Planning Commission (NPC), through the National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, to NUMSA (and Irvin Jim, its general secretary)'s critique of the NDP, was instant, crude and uncharacteristically highly personalised. On 20 March 2013 it released a statement that questioned the broad intent and thrust of the NDP, and called for a Tripartite Alliance Summit to debate the NDP, a nicety the ANC seemingly did not extend to its Alliance partners before the official release of the NDP. ![]() "Cosatu spokesperson, Patrick Craven, told The New Age that 'NDP goes back to the old policies of the growth, employment and redistribution strategy.'" Mabona further quoted Craven as having said "NDP was not a programme for fundamental economic change", and that "the NDP, which appears to be elevated to the status of the Freedom Charter.lacked concrete proposals for tackling the problems of poverty, inequality and unemployment."Īnother major COSATU affiliate, FAWU, has just publicly joined the fray on the NDP. It leaves intact, and protects the power relations of Colonialism of a Special Type in post-1994 South Africa." (Large parts of NDP lifted from DA documents - NUMSA", 07 March 2013, NUMSA website)].Įarlier on 17 February 2013, The New Age carried a report by Warren Mabona under the title "Cosatu not at home with Zuma's state of the nation and NDP", in which he wrote that: [In its official Statement, NUMSA's Central Committee declared (about the NDP) that: "The major problem with the NDP is that it protected power relations of colonialism, leaving them intact." (SAPA/Drum Magazine, 07 March 2013). Jim was reported as having said, amongst other things, that: ![]() What seems to have occasioned this sudden change in the mood around the NDP was the extra-ordinary public critique of it by Irvin Jim, the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), the second biggest affiliate of COSATU. In the place of the air of sunshine optimism that surrounded it after its release to the SA national parliament in August last year, the newly-released SA National Development Plan (NDP), a product of the National Planning Commission (NPC) led by National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, the (now) ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa and Bobby Godsell of Business Leadership SA, is now drowning in a growing cacophy of self-doubt, self-praise and mudslinging.įrom being a potentially significant source of national cohesion and regeneration, the NDP is fast becoming a regrettable source of our new national divisions and bickering. Impatient with the slowness of persuasion and example to achieve the great social changes they envision, they are anxious to use the power of the state to achieve their ends and confident of their ability to do so." Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 2002. It is the external threat coming from men of good intentions and good will who wish to reform us. ![]() ![]() The first in a three part series by Isaac Mogotsi on the Plan
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