23 poorest districts to be upgraded – Zuma
President Jacob Zuma has called on South Africans to back his administration’s National Development Plan as a means of reducing inequality and poverty in South Africa.
In the January 8 statement to the ANC’s 101st anniversary rally in Durban today, Zuma said that the NDP would include massive infrastructure projects, including those aimed at upgrading South Africa’s 23 poorest districts.
These projects, he said, would change the lives of about 19 million people who are presently without either water, sanitation or electricity in various rural parts of South Africa.
More than 2 000 schools and more than 800 health facilities countrywide would also benefit from the infrastructure programme, which would hasten the delivery of water to 1.4 million new households and sanitation to 2.1 million others.
Zuma told the packed ABSA stadium, which was crowded beyond capacity despite suites not being opened by their corporate owners, that the private sector needed to get involved in the roll out as well.
“We call on the private sector to view the infrastructure programme as an opportunity to partner with our government for sustainable development and job creation,’’ Zuma said.
Zuma conceded that government was unlikely to meet the Polokwane target of transferring 30% of the 82m hectares of agricultural land owned by whites in 1994 to black ownership by 2014.
As a result the “willing buyer willing seller’’ principle would be replaced by a “just and equitable’’ policy to speed up land expropriation.
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