Manifesto

Change Must Go On At A Faster Pace!

Message from the President

Fellow South Africans,

Together, through struggle we won our freedom.

The days of darkness are over: together we have ended apartheid minority rule. The rays of dawn have begun to light up our horizon: the light of freedom is challenging the departing darkness of apartheid. The dark days of despair have given way to the season of hope.

Five years ago, you elected a government of the people to begin removing the terrible system of apartheid. In these short five years, your Government led by the ANC has created a new legacy of freedom and democracy.

Our central challenge for the next five years is to use the experience we have gained, the policies we have put in place and the institutions of democracy we have created, to bring about even greater change than we have achieved in the first five years of democratic government.

We must act together, in conditions of social discipline, further to give birth to a South Africa of freedom, prosperity and security for all, committed to act together to solve the national problems that confront all of us, including the advancement of national unity and reconciliation.

TODAY:
South Africans enjoy better conditions of peace and dignity. We have started to build a united nation: joining hands without regard to race, colour and gender. Each of our communities is free at last to express its linguistic and cultural identity in conditions of diversity, with each free to assume its equal place within our new nation, without discrimination. Inspired by a new patriotism, we can truly say: South Africa belongs to all who live in it.

The majority of South Africans who were victims of apartheid neglect enjoy a better quality of life. Women, workers, rural communities and people with disabilities are for the first time receiving focused attention in government programmes.

Every South African enjoys the right to speak freely, to organise freely, to criticise without fear of arrest, prosecution or torture.

Our country enjoys the respect of all nations of the world. We have, as a country, built relations of friendship with the international community, in search of a better world.

Should these changes go on? Should the efforts to build a country of our dreams on the southern tip of Africa continue?

This is the central question that each one of us will have to answer on the 2nd June 1999. We are certain that you will answer YES! We urge you to do so, and thus join the national partnership to build a winning nation through an intensified offensive for transformation, reconstruction and development.

Change must go on at a faster pace! Vote ANC so together we can speed up the journey to a better life!

Thabo Mbeki – ANC President