The nation must win

AS YOU undertake the journey to Mangaung, a burden of responsibility accompanies you. It is one that cannot be easily shed or disregarded because it involves a nation's future.

This burden travels with you to the Free State because the ANC is no ordinary party. It is the ruling party of the Republic of South Africa.

This ANC elective conference is perhaps more important than any since the unbanning of the ANC; even more important than the one of 1990 at which president Oliver Tambo spoke of the hope and trepidation of a party and a nation.

It was, as Tambo said, the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, with freedom looming on the horizon.

"It is us, the generation gathered here in this hall, black and white, that history has singled out to represent the aspirations of generations past and generations still to come. We can uphold and defend their trust in us," Tambo said.

In the week ahead, as a new group of office bearers is elected and policies adopted, generations past and generations still to come once again place their trust in the ANC.

It is the hungry child in Bizana, the grandmother in Polokwane, the unemployed young man in Mangaung and the teenage girl in Malmesbury who look to you for succour and leadership. They are representatives of this nation who demand that the ANC step beyond the destructive and restrictive confines of individuality, power-mongering and deal-making.

South Africa stands at a crossroads at a tumultuous time in modern history. A global economic crisis - the likes of which few economists could have predicted - has not left us unscathed.

The ANC of Tambo, the liberation movement of Nelson Mandela and the party that symbolised our freedom in 1994 has become an unfamiliar, predatory beast that appears intent on devouring its leaders in an orgy of greed, corruption and cronyism.

It does not have to be like this.

We do not need to edge closer to the precipice because there are good men and women among us and, most important, within the ANC, who believe that the miracle of our democratic birth must be protected and held intact for the generations of South Africans yet to be born.

As you deliberate at your conference, remember this.

We were the world's miracle nation in 1994 and your party was at the centre of that miracle - not graft, not tainted leaders, not career politicians with an eye on a purse rather than on people.

This country deserves an ANC that will deliver, that will work hard to create jobs and that will educate our children for a competitive global market.

Most important, the greatest gift that the party can offer us now, in 2012, is the assurance that it can reset its moral compass and rediscover its generous, brave heart that places this country's people at its very centre.

Mandela, as deputy president of the ANC, also spoke at that 1990 conference. There, he said: "The ANC must, at every stage, earn the title of leader of our people by its sensitivity to their aspirations and by timeously responding to their needs and demands. We will achieve this by building the ANC as an instrument of the masses' struggle for liberation.

"The ANC will flourish or fail to the extent that the exploited and the oppressed see it as their movement, championing their rights, and as the embodiment of their will."

Perhaps now, more than ever, the people of South Africa need to know that the ANC is truly the champion of their rights and the embodiment of their will.

Anything else will dishonour this nation and the past leaders of the ANC.