For workers the ANC is the party of liberation; it represents their aspirations and hopes for a better life. That is why they threw their weight behind the ANC during the struggle for liberation and in all the elections since 1994. They are the bulk of the ANC’s electorate base and its constituency.

Workers have much to celebrate in the new democratic South Africa they fought for. No sane person can suggest that this is not a far better country than in the dark days of apartheid.

COSATU’s criticisms of the slow pace of change and the skewed benefits accruing to a minority should not be interpreted as meaning that things have not changed for the better; and we are conscious that that we could not have undone centuries of colonialism and capitalist exploitation in 13 years.

COSATU believes however that for workers and the poor, the promise of a better life for all, and the goal of a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society are still far from having been fulfilled.

Apartheid’s legacy of racial, class and gender inequality persist and will continue, unless we deepen and accelerate transformation. Persisting poverty, inequality and unemployment are not an accident of history but reflect the structural fault lines of the previous system which excluded the majority from the country’s political and economic life.

That is why Cosatu will be arguing at the Gallagher Estate that we need to transform rather than just manage the economic and social relations of a capitalist system we inherited from the apartheid years. It is not enough to insert a few black faces into the court of privilege, while the underlying racial, class and gender contradictions remain unresolved or get even worse.

Economic power is still in the hands of a white, male, minority, while unemployment, poverty and inequality are still concentrated among black people, women and the youth.

Despite the many new jobs created in the past three years, unemployment remains far too high for an upper-middle-income country. What makes it worse is that more and more of these new jobs are of very low quality, as also are many existing jobs, as full-time, permanent employment is replaced by casual and sub-contracted employment with low pay, no benefits and no job security.

South Africa remains a society divided between extremes of wealth and poverty. For the rich, the much-trumpeted economic boom represents bigger profits, higher income and more luxuries.

For the poor the ’economic boom’ represents at best, for a lucky few, only moderate improvements in living standards, insufficient and low-quality jobs and a rising cost of living, and at worst, for the majority, continued mass unemployment and poverty.

Not all these problems can be blamed on the new government, but its economic policies of liberalisation and austerity exacerbated them. The unemployment rate more than doubled between 1994 and 2003, before declining slowly to its current rate of around 25% (37% when we include workers who have given up searching for jobs).

The challenge facing the ANC and its allies this week is how to sustain the revolutionary momentum we built up after the democratic breakthrough and match the advances we have made on the political front with equally dramatic advances in economic transformation.

While capitalism still holds sway across the globe, the international situation is becoming much more favourable. Latin American countries are experimenting with alternatives to neo-liberalism. The world’s super power - the US - is today constantly under question and challenge.

In South Africa, conditions are much more favourable to the liberation movement. We can be more ambitious than at any time since 1994. Public finances are in better shape, the ANC as a movement enjoys greater popular support and the economy has been growing fast, at rates last seen in the 1960s. History challenges us not to squander this opportune moment.

We should therefore emerge from the conference with a much bolder programme for social transformation. If we are to meet our targets of halving poverty and unemployment in the next seven years, our economic and social policies must change. Current policies, while containing progressive elements, remain trapped in an exceedingly cautious macro-economic framework.

First, industrial and macro-economic policy must have as its top priority the creation of new, quality jobs for the millions of the unemployed. We must prioritise and support those sectors with the potential to create large-scale employment.

Recent shortages and the importation of key goods have demonstrated South Africa’s weak manufacturing base. An industrialisation policy is vital to transform and diversity the structure of production and ownership. Dependence on exporting commodities poses serious risks to the economy in the long run; hence the need to diversify our economy to create an internal momentum to meet the needs of our people, while creating more jobs.

Secondly, we need a strategy that effectively redistributes income and ownership of assets, so we can draw millions more of our the poor into the economic mainstream. Agrarian reform and land redistribution, the development of social infrastructure and services, human resource development and improvements in social security are all essential if we are to achieve this.

Thirdly, labour market policy must do more to enforce labour laws and support vulnerable workers. Whereas we have progressive labour laws, their implementation depends on whether the workplace is unionised. It is regrettable that the current discussion documents are quiet on the ANC’s programme to improve working conditions, protect vulnerable workers and enforce current laws which are routinely violated by many employers.

The ANC is right to say that transformation requires an interventionist, developmental state. The task cannot be left to the market. A developmental state cannot however simply be declared; it must be consciously constructed.

The conference must articulate a vision to transform society, around which we can mobilise our people and the mass democratic movement. We need to combine our social power - the people - and the power of the state into a cohesive force for change.

Workers demand that the ANC retains its character as a radical liberation movement, driven by the interests and aspirations of the working class. We are worried by elements of the Strategy and Tactics document that are uncritical of the way the racialised capitalism we inherited is continuing to define our social reality.

The ANC in the past did not fight for a multi-class ’national democratic society’ or a rainbow society in which everyone will in theory have equal opportunities, while in practice the structure remains fundamentally unchanged. If the ANC adopts such a conception of society, it will be no different from the DA and will represent the interests of a deracialised bourgeoisie.

It is not too late to challenge the drift toward liberal democracy. We must ensure the ANC remains firmly committed in words and deeds to the goals of the Freedom Charter - to build a mixed economy that addresses the interests of the overwhelming majority of our society.

Workers have great expectations from the ANC policy conference. In particular, they are expecting it to reverse the experience of the last 13 years in which capital reaped the lion’s share of economic benefits. They expect the conference to adopt policies and strategies that will transform our society, to make it inclusive and equitable. That is why they expect the conference to meet the task of creating jobs and eradicating poverty.