Baroness Amos,
Distinguished guests,

Good day to you all and thank you for hosting us for this discussion.

We are reaching the end of our listening and consultation tour of Europe.

The visit has enabled us to hear what the business community, decision makers and key stakeholders think of how we are managing our country.

We also want to update you on our plans going forward as we move to the next term of government which begins next year.

In January this year, the African National Congress celebrated its 96th anniversary. Very few organisations achieve such longevity.

We celebrated the anniversary just weeks after returning from our 52nd National Conference which was held in December.

The ANC emerged from that conference more united and stronger, despite the heated and robust atmosphere that characterised the period leading to the conference.

The conference demonstrated the solid foundation of the South African democracy. Our members were able to exercise free choices with regards to leadership.

Those whose preferred candidates did not win the contest, immediately rallied behind the newly-elected leadership after the announcement of the results, as it should happen in any democratic situation.

The conference demonstrated that our political system is stable, and that democratic principles rule the way we conduct politics. This commitment to democracy will be evident again next year when we hold our general elections. They will take place as efficiently and as smoothly as all previous ones since 1994, managed by our Electoral Commission.

We will also manage the transition from the current government to the next as efficiently as we have always done in previous years. There should not be apprehension or uncertainty about how the process will unfold. As you are aware, the African National Congress was largely instrumental in the formulation and the final adoption of our new democratic Constitution.

In the many years that we have been in government, we have worked hard to uphold and strengthen the fundamental principles in our country's Constitution. The democratic future of the country is very secure, regardless of which ANC collective is in leadership at any time.

We will continue to strive to make that democratic future a non-racial, non-sexist and inclusive one. Every South African should feel that they have a place in our society. Achieving reconciliation and nation building therefore will continue to be one of the key preoccupations.

We will on the 27th of April celebrate 14 years of freedom. We believe we have done well since 1994, to improve the lives of our people.

While the Mandela years emphasised nation building and reconciliation during a very fragile period of our history, our focus over the last few years has been on transforming our economy to address poverty and create a better life for our people.

We have made progress in this regard since the ANC came into power. We managed first to halt the decline of the economy, and then to turn the economy around. We have recorded consistent uninterrupted economic growth. We have achieved remarkable levels of macroeconomic stability, tackled the budget deficit, and significantly reduced the cost of servicing our public debt.

At the same time, we have managed to undertake the largest provision of basic services to the poor in our country's history. More South Africans have access to housing, water, electricity, sanitation, telephones, education and health care than ever before.

Going forward, we have a clear programme of action for the next five years, adopted at our December conference. We will consolidate the gains we have made, as mentioned above, including our reputation of fiscal prudence and responsible macro-economic management.

We will in the next five years invest resources more vociferously in social transformation and the improvement of service delivery. We have to intensify the fight against poverty as our people need to see the gains of freedom in a more meaningful manner.

The ANC social transformation programme states clearly that we must improve housing, clean water and sanitation, good quality education, access to land for settlement as well as agricultural, good quality healthcare, social welfare and create safer communities.

We must also grow the economy so that it can create jobs. During one of the consultative meetings I held this week, I was informed by a business leader that our economy has the potential to grow by 8% instead of our 6% target. It is encouraging to hear that kind of confidence being expressed. It spurs us on to work even harder.

Social transformation includes building safer communities. We will take tougher and more visible action against crime. Some of the key measures we are looking into are the creation of a single police force. We want to place the municipal and traffic police services in all parts of the country under the command and control of the National Police Commissioner. This would increase the capacity and improve the focus on crime fighting activities.

We will invest in training to improve the investigative and forensic skills of our police.

In our vision for a total overhaul of the criminal justice system, we also envisage increasing the capacity of the judicial system to process the cases and for our prisons or correctional services to incarcerate violent criminals preventing prison escapes. We assure you that these are matters that we are looking at very seriously.

We are convinced that we can win the war against crime, and have started to mobilise the country towards that objective.

Another key component of our social transformation programme is investment in education and skills development. Our people want free and compulsory education at least up to first degree level at university. We are also currently running a national literacy campaign to teach 4, 7 million South Africans basic literacy and numeracy by 2012. Our country needs a literate adult population that will better participate in democratic processes and in the job market.

We have this year also upgraded teacher salaries to boost morale and retain skills. We are also investing in early childhood development.

There are also plans to improve our children's performance in maths, science and technology. In the workplace, we must significantly expand our knowledge production, innovation and research, as well as entrepreneurial, business and financial skills.

We urge business to partner with us and invest in their employees through mentorship, learnerships and other development programmes.

To meet our development goals, we need a healthy population. We therefore are focusing on improving our public health care system and ensuring adequate provision of funding. We are also paying attention to the high cost of health provision and high medicine prices. The remuneration of doctors and nurses to prevent skills flight is another area of focus.

In 2005 it was estimated that about 5 million South Africans were living with HIV. We want to reduce the rate of new HIV infections by 50 percent, and expand access to appropriate treatment, care and support to 80% of all HIV-positive people, by 2011.

To meet our social transformation goals we must have a competitive economy which generates jobs and the revenue. That means we must deal with all possible obstacles in this regard. During the last few days business leaders have expressed concern about our energy crisis.

We view the crisis as a turning point. For us, adversity presents opportunities. Government has a viable plan to manage the energy situation in the short, medium and long-term. The key objective is to create a generation reserve margin that is sufficient to operate the power system in a stable and sustainable manner.

We have to reduce the demand for electricity while building the new generation capacity. Government efforts to change consumer behaviour are paying off. We will surely emerge from this crisis with a population and industrial sector that uses electricity in an environmentally friendly way.

The investor community should see opportunities rather than risks as we are convinced that there will be a turnaround.

There are several measures that we are undertaking. For example we have emergency task teams dealing with coal supplies and sources. We are re-opening power stations that we had mothballed due to surplus capacity. We are also building new coal fired power stations, the first of which should be operational by 2012.

We have to import large scale generators to save energy and to convert traffic lights into solar energy generated lights. We have been assured by our Eskom that it is working to reduce unplanned outages. They wreak havoc on our industries. We have heard the concerns of investors in the mining and other industries about the impact of such outages.

We have said that we will ensure continuity from the current administration to the new government next year in terms of policy and programmes. We also said we do not anticipate policy changes as the policies we adopted in Polokwane will be valid until the next conference in 2012.

However, there will need to be a new way of doing things in government in order to improve service delivery. One of these is to improve our planning capacity so that we can be able to avoid problems such as the energy crisis we are facing.

There has to be improved coordination of economic and social planning at all three spheres of government - local, provincial and national. This would also apply to development finance institutions and state-owned enterprises. We also clearly need to overhaul the capacity of our public service. We envisage a uniform public service and high entrance-requirements and an effective performance management system for senior public servants. This will ensure that implementation of our programmes is conducted in an efficient, effective and caring manner.

We remain fully committed to contribute to building a better Africa and a better world. We therefore welcome the resolution of the conflict in Kenya. It should renew the confidence of the world in the ability of Africa to solve its problems.

Closer to home, we reiterate that the manner in which the March election was handled in Zimbabwe leaves much to be desired. It is unacceptable to withhold election results; it is tantamount to sabotaging the democratic process.

However we remain confident that the Zimbabweans, assisted by SADC, will find a solution to this impasse. Our message to you is, have faith. Africans have demonstrated an ability to resolve even the most protracted of conflicts, for example the Democratic Republic of Congo or Sierra Leone.

The mineral wealth and hydro-electric potential of the DRC could now become the provider of energy for the entire continent. We will continue with our direct engagement with parties in Zimbabwe with a view to finding a solution. As we do that as politicians, we urge the business community to begin looking to the future.

The revival of the economy of Zimbabwe is of critical importance for our region and you would be key partners in that project.

We are also developing an approach to deal with the increasing numbers of Zimbabweans in South Africa. It should be a humane and progressive approach, but one which obviously does not overstretch our resources and infrastructure.

We have attempted to give a synopsis of our priorities. We invite you to partner with us in this journey to build a more prosperous future in our country and region.

I thank you