Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Monday December 16, 2002
Manoah Esipisu and Nicholas Kotch

In a speech to the African National Congress that was well received by nearly 4,000 delegates, Mbeki threatened a crackdown on growing corruption by public servants and local politicians.

But he made only passing references to AIDS, Zimbabwe and violent crime -- three issues on which his government has faced constant domestic and foreign criticism.

"Much work has been done to restructure our economy, to modernize it and make it more competitive," Mbeki said in a strong defense of economic policies that ANC leftists and their Communist and trade union allies complain are too pro-wealthy.

The economy is growing at an annual rate of about three percent -- about twice the global average -- while the volatile rand has clawed back most of its historic losses last year, becoming the world's best-performing currency in 2002.

But eight years after the death of the apartheid system of racial discrimination, income disparities between majority blacks and the 10 percent white minority remain huge. The official unemployment rate is 30 percent.

Mbeki is seen as certain to win a second term as party leader and go on to a second and final five-year term as national president after elections in 2004.

"On the core macro-economic policy issues he was absolutely unbending -- short, clear and not giving an inch," said Richard Calland, a political analyst at the Idasa think-tank.

Dressed in yellow or black T-shirts with the slogan "People's Power in Action," delegates cheered when their historic leader Nelson Mandela walked on to the platform.

Their loudest applause in Mbeki's two-hour speech came when he condemned ANC politicians and civil servants who had adopted corrupt practices which he said were endemic in the former white-ruled South Africa.

"People know very well which officials are corrupt and the important thing is to expose them" said Fundiswa Ngubentomi, a delegate from Free State province. Allegations of embezzlement and corruption have started to fall over some top ANC politicians, but so far, none have stood up in court.

"Mbeki's comments on corruption clearly went down very well," a senior western diplomat said.

ANC AT THE HOME OF APARTHEID

The conference is being held at the Afrikaans-language Stellenbosch university near Cape Town where apartheid was conceived in the 1940s and in a hall named after D.F Malan, one of apartheid's inventors. Partitions kept a bust of Malan conveniently out of delegates' view.

Mbeki said white right-wingers who launched a bombing campaign in October to overthrow ANC rule would never succeed and he praised blacks for resisting the urge to retaliate.

"The bombs are but a delayed echo of a desperate struggle that failed, which sought to perpetuate a social order that was doomed to extinction," Mbeki said.

Leaders of both the COSATU trade union confederation and the Communist Party (SACP), the ANC's supposedly disgruntled partners in the ruling alliance, were complimentary about Mbeki's opening speech.

"Contrary to the view that we were going to get a roasting, (Mbeki) was very strong for the alliance," COSATU head Zwelinzima Vavi told reporters.

The SACP's Blade Nzimande said the alliance was on course to forge a united economic policy at a planned growth and development summit early next year.

In his 46-page speech, Mbeki made only passing mention of HIV-AIDS, which affects an estimated one in nine of South Africa's population of 43 million. Mbeki has back-tracked on his maverick view that HIV does not necessarily cause AIDS but activists question the sincerity of his conversion.

Mbeki wasted little time in his speech on Zimbabwe, South Africa's northern neighbor which is in the grip of an economic and political crisis that has worsened food shortages.

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