We are continuously looking at the question of increasing the capacity of Home Affairs and that is why Home Affairs introduced mobile units, to be able to reach people. The matter of the establishment of the Social Security Agency was to deal with the matter of the more efficient distribution of these grants, the reductions in the levels of corruption and greater sensitivity. You are dealing with vulnerable people, like the elderly, who you needed to find a way of addressing, so that people don't have to be waiting in the sun in the queue, and so on.
Thabo MbekiThe reason I joined the struggle against Apartheid was because you had this system of oppression, which affected everybody who was black. Whether you were old or young, man or woman, in a village or a town, it didn't matter.
Thabo MbekiI think the critical point, really, is that we need to focus black economic empowerment more on the creation of new wealth rather than on these big deals that have been characteristic of this process in the past, of people going to banks, borrowing a lot of money, buying this and when the shares don't perform very well, the shares go back to the banks, because there's other people who own this anyway. I think we need to re-focus it so that it really does impact on growth, new investment, new employment and a general, better spread of wealth in South Africa.
Thabo MbekiHistorically during the years of the White minority regimes, the State, the national Government held this land in trust for these communities. We said, but no, why should we do that ( return the land to the communities). We didn't say return the land to particular traditional leaders, but to the communities.
Thabo Mbeki