ANC's 5th NGC: A Line in the Sand – Economic Transformation and the National Development Mission

South Africans are living a hard truth that our documents sometimes tiptoe around.

We won political rights. We stabilised key macro indicators. We built institutions that, despite everything, still function. Yet for the majority, daily life still feels like survival, not freedom.

That is because we are trying to carry a democratic project on top of an economic structure designed for extraction, not inclusion. A century-old production system is being asked to deliver 21st-century justice. It cannot. It will not. And this is not what we struggled for.

We must finally say it clearly: unless we reorganise the way South Africa produces, works and invests, every promise of “renewal” will be cosmetic.Economic transformation is the heart of the National Democratic Revolution in this phase.

1. The Structural Trap: An Old Economy Dragging a Young Nation

Across ANC, SACP and COSATU documents, and in the Economic Transformation Commission’s own midterm reflections, the diagnosis converges:

South Africa’s economy still rests on a narrow base of minerals, finance, capital-intensive manufacturing and imported consumption, with townships and rural areas locked into low-productivity, informal activity. This produces four reinforcing outcomes:

1. Mass unemployment, especially among youth, is not a “cycle” but a permanent feature.
2. Racialised poverty patterns remain stubbornly close to the apartheid geography.
3. High concentration of mainly still White Capital and predatory elite with cartel-like behaviour block new entrants and black industrialists.
4. A weakened, outsourced state becomes easy prey for both corporate capture and criminal syndicates.

The President’s Political Overview correctly notes poverty, inequality and unemployment. But unless we name the root cause a stagnant production structure we will keep treating symptoms and calling it strategy.

A political movement cannot renew itself on top of a broken economic engine.

2. From Loose Ideas to a National Development Mission

For years our economic discussions have collected good ideas without turning them into a single, disciplined mission. We repeat the shopping list: localisation, industrialisation, township economy, SMMEs, beneficiation, green economy, continental and regional trade…All are valid. None will work alone. Our historic mission is not a shopping list. It is a strategic choice. The choice this NGC must make is simple:

Will the ANC lead a deliberate National Development Mission to restructure production, or will we continue to manage decline with fragmented programmes and hopeful rhetoric? This next phase of our democracy requires one clarifying idea:

Phase 1 (1994–2024): The people shall govern.

Phase 2 (2024–2040): We can frame it this way:

• The first thirty years answered the question: Who governs?
• The next twenty must answer the question: What does the economy produce, and for whom?

Democracy gave people a voice. Development must now give them power. The PEOPLE shall DEVELOP.

3. A Capable, Developmental State as Economic Actor

Economic transformation cannot be outsourced to the market, consultants or mafias.

The SACP has been consistent: state capture was not only theft; it was the hollowing out of the very machinery needed for development. COSATU has been clear that austerity, privatisation by stealth and tenderisation have eroded the state’s ability to plan, build and maintain. A National Development Mission requires:

• Rebuilding internal capacity in key spheres of the state: engineers, planners, data analysts, forensic investigators, project managers.
• Ending dependency on external consultants for core functions. Consultants should add specialist value, not substitute for a hollow core.
• Protecting procurement and infrastructure delivery from criminal networks through transparent systems, blacklists for repeat offenders, and community-based monitoring of projects.

“Without a capable state, economic freedom is not a programme. It is a slogan.”

4. Productive Transformation: From Consumption to Production

South Africa cannot shop its way out of inequality. We must make things, grow things, and design things in townships, small towns, metros and regions. Three pillars can guide this shift.

4.1 Township and Local Industrialisation

Townships are often treated as vote reservoirs and grant recipients. In reality, they are dense economic ecosystems starved of infrastructure, finance and industrial support.

This NGC should back a clear township industrial agenda:

• Designate Township Industrial and Enterprise Zones in all metros and priority secondary towns.
• Use municipal and provincial procurement to create predictable markets for township producers in areas like school furniture, uniforms, building materials, maintenance, cleaning, catering and basic tech services.
• Support community-owned logistics, warehousing and digital platforms so that township businesses are not price-takers at the edge of supply chains.
• Invest in local energy resilience through micro-grids, rooftop solar and basic maintenance of distribution networks, so that black businesses are not the first to close when the grid fails.

REMEMBER LEADERSHIP: “A township is not a queue. It is an economy.”

4.2 Modern Industrial Sectors

At the same time, South Africa must place itself inside the value chains of the future, not just the past. Priority sectors could include:

• electric vehicle components and battery manufacturing
• green hydrogen and associated equipment
• agro-processing linked to land reform and small farmers
• pharmaceuticals and medical devices
• AI, data services and cybersecurity
• climate-resilient technologies for water, housing and agriculture.

The Economic Transformation Commission has already begun identifying opportunities and constraints in these sectors; the NGC must translate into mandates and deadlines, not just note the report.

4.3 Procurement as Industrial Policy

About R1.4 trillion rand in public procurement flows through the state each year. If this is treated as mere “spend”, criminal networks and middlemen will continue to siphon it off. If it is treated as industrial policy, it becomes our biggest factory. Key moves:

• Publish all major tenders, bids and awards on a single, searchable national portal.
• Enforce credible local content and SMME participation thresholds with real penalties for fronting.
• Community monitoring of all major contracts.
• Create a national “no-fly list” for companies and individuals repeatedly implicated in corruption, collusion or labour abuses.
• Combine AG, SIU, SARS and CSD data to detect patterns of fraud and tender-hopping.

“If procurement is not developmental, it will become criminal. There is no neutral ground.”

5. Workers, Wages and a New Development Bargain

COSATU’s resolutions remind us that workers cannot be asked to fund transformation through wage cuts while profits and executive pay remain insulated. A social compact with credible development bargaining should include:

• Real wage growth linked to productivity improvements, not blanket austerity.
• Commitments from business to reinvest a greater share of profits into productive assets, not only financial instruments and offshore accounts.
• Stronger worker representation in sectoral industrial councils where investment, skills and technology choices are made.
• Using public and union pension funds, under strict governance and risk controls, to back infrastructure, industrial and housing projects that create long-term value.

The South African working people is not an “interest group”. It is the foundation on which any serious development path must rest.

6. Youth as Central Actors, Not Spectators

Youth unemployment is the single most explosive fault-line in our social order. We all know it and very family feels and lives it.

We should frame a Youth Economic Mission with clear numbers and timelines:

• Mass training in digital, technical and artisanal skills through revitalised TVET colleges linked to real employers.
• At least 1 million youth trained in digital & industrial skills in 3 years.
• A Youth Construction Brigade and Maintenance Corps focused on housing, schools, clinics, roads and green infrastructure.
• Township and rural digital labs where young people can learn coding, design, online trading and digital services.
• AI-driven job-matching platforms.
• National Youth Community Service linked to skills.

Expanded, properly managed public and social employment programmes that build community assets instead of short-term, low-impact tasks.

“If we do not build with our youth, we will later rebuild our country around our prisons.”

7. The Green Economy: South Africa’s Next Industrial Frontier

Climate change is not an environmental issue, it is an industrial opportunity. South Africa can lead Africa if we:

• Localise green value chains
• Build solar, wind, and battery factories
• Develop green hydrogen corridors (Northern Cape, Coega, Richards Bay)
• Train 100,000 artisans for the clean-energy transition
• Ensure communities benefit from renewable projectsGreen industrialisation means jobs, exports, sovereignty.

8. Concrete Resolutions for the Economic Transformation Commission

To keep this practical, delegates can push for a short list of decisions that are implementable within 24 months:

• Adopt a clear National Development Mission focused on restructuring production, not only redistributing existing income.
• Establish township and local industrial zones in every metro and at least twenty secondary towns, backed by targeted procurement.
• Create a single National Procurement Transparency Platform covering all spheres of the state.
• Rebuild core state capabilities in planning, engineering, forensic investigation and project management, with annual reporting to the NEC and NGC.
• Mandate a Youth Economic Mission with measurable targets for training, placement and enterprise support.
• Approve a green industrial corridor strategy linking energy transition, logistics, manufacturing and skills in defined regions.

9. FOCUS and REMEMBER this:

• “An old economy cannot carry a new nation.”
• “Democracy was the first step. Development is the test.”
• “Procurement is our biggest factory, if we design it that way.”
• “A capable state is not a dream. It is a decision.”
• “Economic transformation is not ideology. It is survival.”
• "A township is an economy, not a vote bank."

For comrades inside the ANC and South Africans outside it, the message is the same:

The struggle generation fought to free the nation. This generation must fight to free the economy. We are not calling for slogans. We are calling for a generational mission.

A mission to build a South Africa where: work is available, communities are safe, the state is capable, the economy is productive and every child can dream without fear.

This is the line in the sand. This is what we struggled for.

* Faiez Jacobs is a former  Member of Parliament, founder of The Transcendence Group, Capetonian, Activist, and Servant of the People.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.