The choice of location had symbolic resonance, as the more than 3,000 overwhelmingly black delegates were meeting at the Afrikaans-language institution that served as an intellectual cradle of the apartheid system.

The ANC was founded in 1912 and politically led the struggle by millions of workers and peasants against white minority rule that culminated in South Africa’s first democratic, nonracial elections in April 1994. For nearly nine years it has been the ruling party in South Africa. Today the ANC-dominated cabinet includes members of the New National Party, the former ruling party of the apartheid regime; the Inkatha Freedom Party; and the Azanian People’s Organization. In 1999 the ANC affiliated to the Socialist International, which groups social-democratic parties and unions internationally.

Opening the meeting, ANC president Thabo Mbeki defined the historic goals of the ANC as "the transformation of South Africa into a democratic, united, peaceful, nonracial, nonsexist, and prosperous country."

Mbeki, who is also the South African president, repeated the chief conclusion delivered by former ANC president Nelson Mandela at the organization’s previous national conference in 1997: "The principal result of our revolution, the displacement of the apartheid political order by a democratic system, has become an established fact of South African society."

Nonetheless, Mbeki said, "we still have a long way to go before we achieve the goal of creating a nonracial society."

"The bulk of our economy, including the land, remains predominantly white-owned. Wealth, income, opportunity, and skills continue to be distributed according to racial patterns. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of the poor and the unemployed... are black people," said Mbeki.

"Naturally, the incidence of disease and death, of morbidity and mortality, reflects these racial imbalances. These include the incidence of tuberculosis, AIDS, infectious diseases as a whole, and diseases of poverty."

Mbeki said progress had been made over the past five years under the ANC-led government. Its main accomplishments, he said, "ranged from issues of increased black ownership of productive property, access to houses and social services, larger numbers of black people joining the middle strata, changes in the composition of the social sector made up of professionals, managers, skilled people, students and trainees within the universities...to acquisition of productive land."

The judiciary, he pointed out, had been one of the most recalcitrant sections of the state apparatus, and more blacks and women needed to be appointed to the bench.  
 
Debate on goals of revolution
Since 1994, public debate over how to realize the historic goals of the democratic revolution has raged, including within the ANC and the two organizations with which it is in formal alliance: the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the country’s largest trade union federation; and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

On the economic front, the ANC has pursued "market-friendly policies," tight limits on government spending, and capital investment from abroad in the hope that this will fuel growth and create jobs. Within that framework, it has committed substantial portions of the national budget to housing, health care, education, and other areas of the greatest need for workers and peasants.

Economic growth, however, has only averaged about 3 percent over the past year, far short of the rate needed to create jobs for the 30 percent of the working-age population that is unemployed.

Prior to the conference, the ANC leadership stressed that the party’s economic policies had been reaffirmed by a Policy Conference held earlier in the year and that they would not be up for debate. Instead, delegates were urged to focus on "implementation."

While the great majority of ANC supporters are workers and peasants, since 1994 a growing stratum of middle-class blacks has emerged, fueled by the lowering of racial barriers to employment by the state and various professions. There is also a small but prominent layer of capitalists who are black, and these figures exercise substantial influence within the ANC.

Mbeki devoted a portion of his speech to the need to "deracialize" the economy and to promote "black empowerment" in various industries. This comes in the wake of debate over a new mining law that transfers mineral rights to the state, and a charter proposing that mining companies be 26 percent black-owned within 10 years.  
 
Mandela speaks
"Up to now, no South African political organization has a policy which can rival that of the African National Congress," said Nelson Mandela in his speech to conference delegates. "The lesson of history clearly establishes that voters do not easily forget a political organization that liberated them," he said, citing the decades of post-colonial rule by governing parties in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere in Southern Africa.

Mandela criticized Washington and London for their "arrogance" in relation to Iraq, saying the U.S. government was unilaterally moving toward war with Baghdad and should not be ignoring the United Nations Security Council.

Both Mbeki and ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and acknowledged growing problems stemming from the ANC’s role as the ruling party, including indiscipline, corruption, and lack of accountability involving ANC cadres in all levels of government.  
 
 
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