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Redi Direko: Hallo and welcome to this special broadcast on SABC2 and SABC radio. For the next hour, we will be talking to the President of the Republic, Mr Thabo Mbeki, after his State of the Nation Address on Friday. I am Redi Direko and with me, John Perlman. John?

John Perlman: Yes, good evening everyone at home. Mr President, welcome to you.

President Thabo Mbeki: Thank you.

John Perlman: And thanks very much for your time. In your speech on Friday, you spoke of economic progress, inflation down to 4%, lots of money now available, perhaps with the nett open forward position looking healthy, our longest ever period of consistent growth. And yet, young men and women, four years out of school, still looking for work, must sometimes wonder when all those benefits are going to touch their lives.

President Mbeki: Well John that is why we have raised the matter of our need to recognise that we have, in reality, two economies in South Africa. We have, in truth, during the last ten years, attended to what has been called the first economy, developed, modern, internationally competitive and so on. And this has behaved in the way you have just indicated.

But there are many people who get left out, partly because they do not have the skills that the modern, first economy wants. It creates jobs, but it wants people with particular skills. And if you do not have the skills, it does not become easy for you to get employed. And you get people without any education whatsoever. It has been a phenomenon of the South African economy for some time already that it has become less and less dependent on unskilled labour.

And so we have said it is important that we should then respond, regarding that second economy, in specific ways. You cannot say that policies that would work with regard to the first economy will necessarily have an impact on the second. It requires its own different interventions.

Redi Direko: What sort of interventions are those, Mr President?

President Mbeki: Well, for instance, matters that we have raised about the expanded public works programme. That should not just be a matter of public works. People go there and work on building a rural road, or something, but, while they are working, they should also receive training. And not training just in building rural roads, but training in the construction industry, so that they are then able to work in the construction industry or even be able to set themselves up as independent small business people.

So, it is a matter of really attending very, very seriously to the matter of skills, and that includes young people who come out of the schools. Because you might come out with a matric and pass well, but in reality it gives you good literacy and maybe good numeracy, but it does not necessarily qualify you to do the things that an employer wants. I did an Imbizo here in the Western Cape and a very good suggestion came from young people who were there, who said: "Well President, why don't we, those of us who are in our final year at high school, get courses in driving?" Driving motor vehicles. This is because you come out and you are looking for a job, and lots of employers ask: "Can you drive?" And you cannot, because there is no subject "motor car driving" in matric. I thought it was a very good idea. I immediately agreed with them.

It is those sorts of interventions that aim at ensuring that we make conscious interventions to provide people with the skills that are required by the economy, as well as skills that would enable them to set small and medium business, and micro business. In many instances, people need the various skills to be able to set up businesses like that.

Redi Direko: But what about those young people - and I come across a lot of those people when you visit universities. People who will say: "I have got an honours degree, I have done some internship, but still, there is not that opportunity for me to crack the job market." It seems as though we have two extremes. Those who do not have the skills, those who do, but the labour force is not absorbing them. What unique interventions can be made?

President Mbeki: That depends also, even with university graduates, on what it is that they have studied. If you qualify and come out of teacher training, for instance, with Biblical Studies you are not going to get very many jobs for that. Or you might come out with a sociology degree. There are all sorts of degrees like this that people might come out of university with which are not readily marketable except in teaching.

You will see the way that we have approached the matter of the transformation of our educational system has sought to address this matter - all these issues raised about further education and training, for instance, the revamping of the technical colleges, the upgrading of the technikons so that they continue to focus on degrees involving more skills, professional skills. It is a response to make sure that we are able to raise those levels.

John Perlman: But we have training interventions, the sector education and training authorities (SETAs) are very prominent, a very major part of government policy, and yet, they take R6 billion out of the economy and over the last two years they have managed to spend just half of that. It feeds into a bigger criticism of government policy that there is too much regulation. They are trying to do too much. It is costing time and money and ultimately costing jobs.

President Mbeki: You are quite correct to refer to the matter of the SETAs and, indeed, government has been quite unhappy about the way they function, because in many instances, not in all, there has been a very slow uptake in terms of the funds that are available. It is partly a historical traditional issue. For instance, if you talk to the German-South Africa Chamber of Commerce, they have been saying that there is a tradition in Germany of training, of raising of skills.

John Perlman: But should we have taken that money away from employers and out of potentially productive use if the structures were not in place to actually deploy it?

President Mbeki: No, the people who are basically responsible for the money are the employers and the trade unions. It is not government. What we need to do is to inspire them. This is why I was giving the example of Germany, to inspire them to understand that indeed, there is a need and that it is in their own interest that they pay attention to this.

Then there are those sectors of the economy that have taken this issue up. Here in Cape Town there is the very, very good work that has been done in the clothing industry. It is not only training people for particular companies but training more generally, including unemployed people who had come out of clothing and textiles. Those sectors of the economy that have taken up this matter, as they should have, show what needs to be done. But there is a certain amount of inertia, which comes from past structures. You know very well that in the years before 1094 even the system of apprenticeship had been discontinued in the South African economy. When you re-introduce it now, people drag their feet, as it were.

Redi Direko: Mr President, now, I am interested in the way forward. We have highlighted the positives. We have highlighted where the problem areas are, by mentioning the skills there, but are you on a sustainable job creation path, and why would you say that?

President Mbeki: First of all, with reference to what I have referred to as the second economy, there is a false impression created that what we have had in South Africa over the last ten years is jobless growth. It is not true. That first economy has indeed created jobs. The problem has been that the numbers of people entering the labour market has been larger than the number of people that have been absorbed into jobs. So that economy will continue to grow, I am convinced. It will continue to create jobs.

But we need to address this matter of other people who get marginalized, despite all those rates of growth, because of the absence of skills, and so on. I am quite certain that if we do make the interventions that had been decided on, then we shall do it. I do not see why it should be so difficult for us to overcome this problem.

You see the advertisements in the newspapers, for jobs, jobs, jobs. You see that every week and the reason they do not get filled is because the skilled people are not there. One of the major companies here was telling me, not very long ago, that they were doing some expansion of their production capacity and they ran out of welders. There are no welders and they had to import welders from Malaysia. And when they looked into it they discovered that many South Africa welders have gone to work in the Middle East because they are better paid and others have come off the formal market into the informal market. But there is demand for that kind of skill.

If we work as we say we should, I do not see why, over time, we should not solve this problem.

John Perlman: Mr President, black economic empowerment (BEE) is part of the mix in any economic strategy in the country. Is it just a numbers game? Or, do you hold the view that a company, run and owned by black people, should be a different kind of company in its relationship to the community, in the way it treats its workers, in its attitude, for instance, to job creation?

President Mbeki: Well, I am not sure. We are talking about broad based black economic empowerment and that means a number of things. Sure, it means companies, small, medium, large companies. And not necessarily what has happened, certainly in a good part of these ten years, when people went and borrowed money to buy large stakes of large companies, losing in many instances because the finances did not work out properly. But, starting from micro enterprises, as part of this process of black economic empowerment, issues of skills training, issues of changing the composition of management - that is all part of this process.

What we would then say is that all business people ought to have a sense that it is better for them, as business people, to have a stable society. And therefore they should see it as in their interest that they also need to make their own contribution to the solution of the social problems that affect the country. Because you can run a successful business, but if tomorrow the country burns because of social problems that have not been solved, your company, your successful company, is not going to be saved.

John Perlman: But do you get a sense that the empowerment companies are doing things differently? Are they more mindful of social responsibility? Are they looking to be, for instance, more labour intensive than, than otherwise they might be?

President Mbeki: I would not want to make a particular selection. I think there are people, black business people, who have that sense, that level of consciousness. But also there are white business people who have the same level of consciousness and are doing things. I think we need generally to cultivate, that sense of understanding in business. It is true for business everywhere else in the world. The issue is raised by somebody as big as David Rockefeller in the United States (US), who says it is wrong for US business just to say: The only thing that must govern business decisions is the bottom line. He says it is wrong.

Redi Direko: So there are businesses that are responding to that social responsibility? Are you satisfied with the level of response?

President Mbeki: Many business people are responding. What you see happening, for instance, with regard to the various charters that are being negotiated is because there is a greater understanding of the need to get involved in changing the country for the better. We had legislation to do with the financial services, for instance. We held it back because the financial services said: Look, we can deal with these matters that are raised in the legislation, voluntarily, on our own; and indeed they produced the financial charter, which the government supports. So, I think businesses are responding.

Redi Direko: I want to go back to what John said. You responded that you would not want to make a distinction between BEE and business in general responding to the social responsibility. But, Mr President, can you really take that stance when a year ago we were talking about BEE only benefiting a few and the benefits of that not trickling down to the people who need it. Should we not give it special mention or attention, as it were?

President Mbeki: Well, the assessment that black economic empowerment was only benefiting a few was wrong in the first instance.

Redi Direko: Was it?

President Mbeki: Yes, of course it was. It has always been wrong. It is because on the British Broadcasting Corporation and South African Broadcasting Corporation and the newspapers people see the big names and the big figures. But just look at any of the parastatal organisations, whether it is Eskom or Telkom, and look at what they do with their procurement budgets; what they access from small business people. They are never reported about, lots of little contracts like this. The government generally does that. So, it is not true that it has benefited just a few.

And I must say that none of the big names that are cited as a few has actually ever depended on government interventions to do whatever they have done. They have all done it by themselves and gone to the banks, and negotiated their own deals. It was not government intervention that got them where they are.

It is the smaller people who have benefited from what the government has done, in all sorts of ways. Look at company registrations: You will have an interview one day with the Minister of Trade and Industry whose people deal with company registrations. They will show you the figures. There has been a very, very sharp increase over the years of small black registered companies, which are not reported upon. And a lot of those would be people who would have become involved in business because the government said: well, if you have to buy ten reams of paper, you have got to buy them from somebody; why do not we open the space for somebody else who is small to go and supply those ten reams of paper. That is not your big people who are dealing with billions.

So, I am quite certain that what has happened in terms of government intervention has had a much wider impact than perhaps is recognised.

John Perlman: Mr President, government intervenes, and is involved in all sorts of areas of the economy where business is concerned. Questions are asked why it does not intervene more in areas of concern like the very poor. And I am thinking, in particular, about food prices.

President Mbeki: In matters of intervention in the economy, I think we must accept that it is not straightforward, but complicated. We did intervene with that matter of food prices, as you know, when food prices went up at the time that the currency was depreciating very rapidly. One of the things that was done was to set up a committee, a kind of watchdog committee that reports to government so that we can see what to do. But you have got to recognise at the same time that we are dealing with essentially a market economy. And therefore ...

John Perlman: Even, even in essential goods like that. Does it have to be that way?

President Mbeki: Even in essential goods. I can cite you instances where there have been interventions to regulate prices in a particular way and to finance losses in consumer goods being sold below cost, and the difference being made up from the state budget. I know instances in other parts of the world where this has resulted in big crises, countries that have run budget deficits of over 10%, because of subsidies to make food and other services and products available at affordable prices. Those countries are today bankrupt.

You cannot handle the matter as though you are a little god, as though you can do as you wish. You cannot do as you wish. There are certain constraints within which you must intervene. And you can intervene. The interventions that government has made, which include the larger interventions, have not just focussed on this or that particular item but concern the state of the economy in general. How do you deal with the economy so that it does not create the circumstances where you have this sharp increase in prices for basic goods?

And you would remember that we did an increase for old age pensioners in between the budgets. It was said that given the price increases, we could not wait for the next budget because these are the standard products that these poor people, these old people, buy: staple foods - let us give them additional money to be able to afford them. You can make interventions as we have done. I think that the manner in which the government has approached this thing has been correct.

Redi Direko: Mr President, another huge issue, an issue of concern: service delivery. On Friday, you spoke about continuing with the vigorous implementation of existing policies. But a lot of people, ordinary people, will tell you: We hear that the services are there, we hear that government is making these intentions, but the bureaucracy is preventing them from accessing the services. How do you respond?

President Mbeki: I would think that in many instances - in perhaps not all, it would be a problem of a weak bureaucracy. The government has been raising this question of the need for us to do more to strengthen the system of local government because this is where delivery takes place. I am quite certain that we have to do more about that.

When we have gone on campaigns, for instance to familiarise people with social grants that are available, whether it is child support or disability and so on, you still have very grown-up people who do not have identity documents (IDs) and do not know where to get them. And therefore they cannot access these grants. So you need a system to be able to help people.

That is part of the reason we said that we need to establish an echelon of community development workers. They are people who are not going to be sitting in an office but must go out among the communities, and, indeed, go house to house and ask: "Have you people got IDs?" And if they do not, to assist them to get IDs. "What is the situation in your family?" Here is a single parent, a family with the mother not working and so many children: "This is what you do."

I am talking about the weakness in the administration rather than over-bureaucracy. That is why I was raising this matter of the need for us to strengthen local government. We have to do that. There are other problems, with local government financing, for instance.

Redi Direko: Unspent money? When we talk about service delivery, Mr President, I cannot count the instances where one reads that in this department there is money that has not been spent. And, in this context ...

President Mbeki: Again, you would find that that it is the same problem. For sure, you get money not being spent. You find in many instances it is the structures lower down that would actually spend the money that are too weak and would actually not be able to spend this money and account for it properly. So you do not simply, because you say you have got to do something, throw money at this. If you do so then the Auditor-General is going to be on your neck tomorrow and say: but what was the money used for? And you cannot account for it because those structures do not have the capacity. A lot of the time that is the problem.

Redi Direko: So what do you do about it? It sounds absolutely tiring.

President Mbeki: It is a matter of strengthening the public service machinery, and injecting into that public service machinery the sense of service to the people of South Africa. So I am talking about Batho Pele all the time. And, I am afraid there is no short cut. That is the route you have got to go.

John Perlman: Your own Ten-Year Review is not very optimistic about it. If I can quote: "Research commissioned for the Review suggests that the needs of local government are most critical, with the majority of municipalities not having the capacity". And this seems to be the key part: "Or likely to gain the capacity to perform their delivery functions in the future".

President Mbeki: Well, they would have made that determination on the basis of the existing system, for instance with regard to the distribution of funds through the equitable share. The basic philosophy around financing of local government in this country and many other countries is that essentially local government taxes its own population, raises its money, and then gets a smaller sum of money from the national budget.

You have the big municipalities, the metros, which can cope because they have got a relatively large tax base. But you have many, many municipalities, district municipalities, rural areas that do not have. And we have to look at this matter. So when you say "equitable share", it is equitable in terms of whatever formula you use in terms of numbers, and this, and that, and the other. It is equitable, but in terms of levels of development, you are disadvantaging areas that are already disadvantaged.

So to that extent, yes, indeed, the Ten-Year Review would make that observation, but I am saying maybe it should have said: If we continue as we have been; therefore this is the consequence.

John Perlman: If we were to continue in a different way, the people who you describe in your speech as pushers of paper and guardians of rubber stamps would need to change as well. You also spoke of the patience and the willingness to sacrifice of the masses. Do you think the two might be related, that there is deep within the heart of the bureaucracy, and perhaps even within the government, an assumption that the masses will abide and tolerate indefinitely?

President Mbeki: No. I think one of the things that all of us have got to realise is this, regarding your ordinary poor persons. What have they seen over the last ten years? A person might be living in a shack, but the person knows that in the area next door, they were in shacks, but they are no longer in shacks; that the housing development is coming to me. That is what gives the people hope. It is not anything mysterious. The village next door did not have water, I do not have water, but the village next door now has water. The construction people are on their way to my village. That is what gives people hope and confidence in the future. If that was not happening, of course all sorts of things would go wrong.

There is not any sense of complacency in government. But the task - that all of us, not just government, but that South Africa has had over the last ten years to create a new society - is very big.

John Perlman: But if it is not complacency, what do you think is going on in the heads of the pushers of paper and the guardians of rubber stamps?

President Mbeki: Oh, there are some people who are like that. Certainly, there are some people like that. But, I do not think we should condemn everybody in the public service. I spoke about the senior management in the public service that has emerged over the last ten years that is very good, that is absolutely top class and working very well. So it is not all civil servants. It is not all civil servants everywhere.

Some of the problems that all of us have got to solve come down to this: if you take a district municipality, rural district municipality, a lot of them do not have the kind of person that you need with the necessary skill, because they have left for the towns. For instance, the matter where the health people now announced special allowances for medical people to work in rural areas, is because people drift away from there. Your most disadvantaged area that needs the skills to be able to uplift itself, even if you made the money available, does not have these managers, project managers, and so on. Even people born in this area have gone elsewhere.

So I do not think we should pretend it is an easy thing to do. How are you going to attract John Perlman to go back to his village and get him from Johannesburg? He is going to say: No, please, I have got a job, now why do you want to take me backwards? And it is a real challenge. But it is a challenge we have got to meet. Because you cannot say: Okay, let everybody trek to Johannesburg and Cape Town and then we do not have that problem. People are there. People will be there. So we have got to make these interventions. But I am saying that we should not pretend that it is easy.

Redi Direko: Mr President, you have just said, in response to John's question, that it is not everybody who is like that. But, unfortunately, people want to see some action, when there are instances where you have people who are making it even harder for people to access services. How is the government dealing with that? Is it being seen to be dealing with it?

President Mbeki: The first response must be from the people who experience that negative attitude on the part of public servants, from the public. I sit in Pretoria and Cape Town. There is no way I am going to know that Redi Direko, who was supposed to hand out pensions to old age pensioners, did not do it unless an old age pensioner comes and says: Here is somebody who has done this or that or the other. Then, of course, we will respond.

I think that is the first response - for the people to do that. The bulk of cases of corruption in the public service that have been reported upon is as a result of government action. In many instances it is because people will know what is happening because they experience it and they come and say: This is what happened to me. And then you follow up on that.

But certainly from the point of view of government, it is a matter that we watch very carefully. The Public Service Commission, for instance - has this as one of its mandates. It - must keep its eye on the entirety of the public service continuously, working with the Auditor-General, to see what is happening. If there is anything that is coming out of there, which is of a negative kind, it must then intervene. The machinery is there, but it is important that the people should then respond themselves.

John Perlman: Mr President, you have delivered six opening of Parliament addresses and, on Friday, as in the previous five, with the eyes of the country on you, you did not speak about HIV/AIDS with a sense of compassion or a sense of identification with those who are suffering form the disease. Given that you speak with compassion and with a sense of identification on so many other issues, why is that?

President Mbeki: Well, I do not know what that means, John. You see, what happens, and what has been happening now for a number of years, is that in January the government holds a Cabinet Lekgotla. We meet for three days. And part of what happens is that we do a review of the year - that is, the financial year that has come to an end - and have a final look at the budget to be presented, as it is to be presented later this month. It is a more global look.

But because we are dealing with the tenth anniversary year we also had a look at that, and there would be some issues that will be raised in government, which would be reflected in that State of the Nation Address. Because we are dealing with the tenth anniversary, the general agreement was that we have to deal with the more global issues, in particular, because quite shortly we will have another State of the Nation address, it will become possible then to deal with all sorts of detailed matters. So, for instance, the budget is going to be presented this month. There will not be a discussion of the budget votes, because of the forthcoming elections. The budget votes will come after the elections, at which people will then deal with the specific programmes.

It is a peculiarity of this particular State of the Nation address. So, we did not deal with any of these detailed matters in detail, all the questions that you are raising because it is the particular nature of this particular State of the Nation address. The entirety of government will come back to all of these other issues when those budgets would ...

John Perlman: But I am going back on five other speeches as well. And I ask the question, because when people look at the success of a country like Uganda, in tackling HIV/AIDS, one factor that is spoken of, and I am sure you have read similar reports, is a strong sense that from the top of the country the problem is embraced and embraced wholeheartedly by the President.

President Mbeki: Well, I do not know what you want us to do. You know, we have been running this campaign on HIV and AIDS for a long time. When President Mandela was President of South Africa, the Deputy President was asked to lead this campaign. Mandela never led it. There was no complaint about it and the government continued that practice. This is what has happened over the last ten years.

As far as government is concerned, in attending to this matter there are very large budget allocations. You will see it now in the new budget that is going to come out. All sorts of work are being done. I do not think that there is any country in the world that really can hold a candle to South Africa with regard to this.

John Perlman: But you, yourself, have said that money alone would not solve the problem. And, in a disease like this, where shame and secrecy and stigma is such a big part, do you not feel it would make a big difference if the President were to speak about it in that compassionate tone?

President Mbeki: I have said many things about this matter over the years. I do not think the government is going to change its stance on this thing. We have got a programme, we have announced it, and it is a campaign that runs all the time. If you look right through government, from local government to national government, it is a very big programme. I challenge anybody to produce any other country of the world that runs a comparable programme.

That is what we will continue to do and the Deputy President leads us on this matter, and in instances where the President has got to speak, of course the President speaks about it. So that is what will happen.

But there is also another responsibility here. You know, tuberculosis (TB) is a very important disease in this country. I do not know why South Africans do not want to talk about it. My doctors have said to me, "President, do you understand that diabetes in this country has reached epidemic proportions." I said, "Epidemic?" They said, "Yes, epidemic proportions". Why are we not talking about these things? There are many, many things that impact on the health of our people. We have got to intervene. Nobody complains and says: "President, why are you not making noise about TB?" The World Health Organisation (WHO) says South Africa is one of the nine worst countries in the world, in relation to TB. But why are we not talking about it?

Redi Direko: But maybe because those diseases are controllable. AIDS has proved to be the most difficult one.

President Mbeki: No, it is not. It is not the reason. It is not the reason. It is not because they are controllable.

Redi Direko: Why is it?

President Mbeki: I do not know why, it is a reluctance to talk about the general burden of disease on our people.

Redi Direko: But, Mr President, when organisations like the World Health Organisation released the report just last year December, predicted the worst is yet to come, that Africa has entered a phase of upward spiralling and made particular mention of South Africa. Is that just melodrama or would our government ...

President Mbeki: The WHO will answer for itself. As South Africa, of course, we will answer for ourselves. I have said this thing publicly. South Africa does not have, up to today, a proper record of mortality statistics. It does not exist. We do not know what are the things that kill South Africans, not from mathematical models and extrapolations but from Home Affairs.

Home Affairs receives notices of death by law. If any South African dies, a medical doctor must certify that this person has died and this is the cause of death. All of these medical certificates are with the Ministry of Home Affairs. But if you ask anybody in government to say whether these things have ever been put together so as to be able to say - during the year 2003, this is how many people died, this is what the doctor said these people died from - this does not exist.

Redi Direko: But what does it say about what we are reading about, AIDS related deaths ...

President Mbeki: I do not know what it says. Obviously, as government, you have to have your health policy, and by health policy I do not just mean intervention with drugs and medicines. Everything has to do with the health of people - clean water, good nutrition, all of these things. Surely, we must have some idea as to what are these things that are killing our people?

Redi Direko: Does it irritate you when people keep expecting you to expatiate on HIV/AIDS?

President Mbeki: No, it does not. What puzzles me is why people do not want to think. We have collected all of these notices of death from Home Affairs from 1996 to June 2003, altogether two and a half million. We have given them to people to say: Now, can you please work on this, sort out all of these things systematically, to say: in 1996 so many people died and this is what killed them. Those documents would also indicate places - where did these people die, gender, these kinds of things.

So, when that process is done - I do not know when it will get done, Statistics South Africa and other people are working on that - for the very, very first time you will get a picture based on actually what has been recorded by the medical profession in this country in terms of causes of mortality. For the first time. So, you will see the numbers and all of these things will be checked, even the presumptions that I make by saying that my own team of medical doctors who have got to do regular check-ups, tell me: "President, we have an epidemic of diabetes in the country and it is killing people and nothing is being said and nothing is being done." I do not know that, it is what they say.

We will be able, whenever this process is done to get for the first time, the very first time, a picture of the causes of death that will include areas, incidence of disease and death from various causes in particular areas.

The only figure there is, now, is death from road accidents. And the reason for that is because there was a judicial commission of enquiry into the Road Accident Fund. And they went into it in depth, into this particular matter, to say: what is happening to the Road Accident Fund and its financing? They had to understand the burden on the Road Accident Fund of death and injuries.

We will get that and I hope that South Africans will discuss those figures rationally.

John Perlman: Mr President, crime? Figures look like they are coming down, but has government done any assessment of the extent to which that is due to the workings of the criminal justice system, and the extent to which that might be due to the expenditure of individual South African households, small businesses, large corporations, on their own security, that has been done. Do we need to start factoring in potentially the economic cost of that?

President Mbeki: Yes, I would imagine that those individual initiatives would also have helped. I do not know what international practice is with regard to this, because the phenomenon of private security interventions is not peculiarly South African either. Maybe we should compute that figure as well as its economic impact, as you suggest.

But, you see, this is again a part of our problem. If you look at the detailed statistics that come from the South African Police Service, you will see quite clearly that various types of crime affect particular sections or categories of our people. Crimes against the person, whether it is rape, children and women, abuse, assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm, murder - these crimes of violence against the person would overwhelmingly occur among poor working class communities.

This is part of what we are discussing in saying that the interventions we need are not merely criminal justice. You can see the collapse in poor communities of all manner of value systems and social structures, family and other. That generates particular kinds of crimes. You need interventions when you talk about crime prevention. You need interventions rather than just police arrests and courts. We have to have a better kind of response.

Naturally, I suppose, what you would see reported is a car hijacked in the street, a bank robbed, and all of that. But the bulk of this crime is elsewhere. Here in Cape Town, 75% of your murders are on the Cape Flats, and that 75% occurs between Friday and Sunday. It is clear why.

John Perlman: But that might suggest then what I am saying, that, in fact, the decline in crime is to the benefit of a smaller group of South Africans who may be beneficiaries of the criminal justice system, but may, in fact, be simply beneficiaries of the fact that they can buy their way out of the problem.

President Mbeki: Sure, indeed, I would certainly be concerned about this, because I agree that the people who have benefited from these sorts of interventions by the police or even private security companies would be particular sections of our people.

In the case of the poor, where you need social change in addition to better policing, and people say: Let us put more police on the streets. I agree. But just look at the murder statistics - lots of the people who will be murdered over the weekend are people who know one another. They are drinking together. There is no reason why you should think that they are going to be quarrelling and that therefore there must be a policeman patrolling that area. They fight and they quarrel and they break bottles and they stab one another. They bleed to death.

I agree with you, it may very well be that the interventions that we are making have still not impacted sufficiently on these sections of our population. And that will go for abuse of women and violence against women, against children and so on. When you campaign saying: Let us stop violence against women and children, are you reaching these people where a lot of these things are very prevalent.

Look at the Northern Cape. It has a disproportionate number, in per capita terms, not absolute terms, of people who get involved in these crimes against the person. It is because of the social condition of the people. And it is perfectly correct and I would agree with what you have said, that perhaps the interventions that we are making have not sufficiently impacted on those people. They might have impacted better elsewhere.

Something we have got to understand first of all is that sometimes, the way the matter is put out, it is as if you would be walking up and down the major streets of Cape Town and somebody is going to murder you. It is not like that. You can get murdered, sure, but it is not normal. It is not the kind of crime statistic that is regular. It is elsewhere in our society that you find these incidents. There is nothing peculiarly South African about it. It is a phenomenon that you find this kind of crime in France. In the last presidential elections in France this was a big issue. It is the same phenomenon. In the United Kingdom. It is a global problem. In the interventions we make, we must be careful not to generalise and pretend that it has impacted in the same way on all sections of the people.

Redi Direko: Mr President, let us move on to Zimbabwe. Where is the process right now?

President Mbeki: Unfortunately it is the same as South Africa to some extent: People are on holiday in December and January. And so, the last time I spoke to both sides, they had been affected by this. They had agreed, as I had said, to begin the formal negotiations and they then met to say how should this be done, and agreed that a draft would be done of the process as to how do they begin and what is the agenda and so on. That draft had been done. In fact, it had been done by the end of December, but they had not met, because people were on holiday. I should hope that the holidays are over now and that they would indeed meet.

There was great keenness on both sides that they must begin formal negotiations. I saw a report in today's Sunday press here that the Secretary-General of the MDC, Prof Ncube, said that, indeed, they are looking forward to the beginning of the negotiations and he believes that, once they start, they might conclude these negotiations in two months, and I agree with him.

Redi Direko: You have made it clear that quiet diplomacy is the way to go. Now, I am interested to find out from you, what sort of benchmarks do you use for yourself to measure that it is working. In other words, what is it that you look at and say: yes, I am on the right track?

President Mbeki: Well, the first thing you have got to understand is that it is not to satisfy the South Africans. It is to satisfy the Zimbabweans. We sit with the Zimbabweans and we say to them, in our view these are your problems, and in our view, this is how we think you should get out of the problems. They agree or they do not agree.

But anyway, we have agreed that they need to sit and negotiate and, among other things, to look at their constitution. There are things that the MDC has been raising with us for a number of years about the constitution of Zimbabwe, which we discussed with the President, with the government, with ZANU-PF and we said: Well sit together and sort out these things.

There are matters of legislation that has been approved as affecting the press and the freedom of assembly and things like that. Deal with those within the context of whatever constitutional changes you are to make.

You are going to have to deal together, with the problem of a very, very deep economic crisis in the country. Not one of you can handle it on your own. It requires real national, serious national, effort. You have to deal with that.

So, they agreed on that, and said the next step, must be now. They said that they wanted to have informal talks, so we said: Okay, it is your decision. And they have had informal talks. Now both of them have said it is now time to move to formal negotiations. We said: Fine.

As I say, the latest report that I had was that the actual programme of handling those formal talks was drafted in time. The process was disrupted by the fact that people were on holiday. I would hope that they would start and if Prof Ncube is right, indeed let them complete this thing in two months. I do not see why they should not.

One of the issues we have been insisting on with them is that there are political parties and they compete. They have generally both agreed that the next parliamentary elections should take place in March 2005, which is not far away. So people will have their political competition as we do in this country. A bit of grandstanding will take place - you cannot avoid that.

But, we have said to them: certainly our view is that you cannot keep postponing the matter of dealing with the actual practical lives of the Zimbabweans. The sooner you finish these negotiations, the better, so that this matter can be attended to.

end of interview

Prepared by Pegasus Transcription Services

Issued by: GCIS
8 February 2004