ANC to push for land expropriation

The ANC caucus in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL) wrapped up its three-day lekgotla on Sunday with a promise to pursue land expropriation, improve school infrastructure and ramp up law enforcement - just three of among a raft of measures aimed at improving the lives of local residents, News24.com reported.  

Held under the theme, "Oliver Reginald Tambo: Let us deepen Unity,"it was ANC's Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) Lekgotla as well as a forum to discuss the 2017 State of the Nation address by President Jacob Zuma.

ANC Gauteng Chief Whip Brian Hlongwa said the ANC-led administration had continued to make strides in growing the base of the country's economy through the Transformation, Modernisation and Reindustrialisation (TMR) Strategy.

In particular, this was done  by leveraging the latent potential in the township enterprises to stimulate black industrialists and emerging young African entrepreneurs.

Hlongwa said the communities were becoming safer and the schools continued to produce better results.

"More young people are accessing institutions of higher learning through the GPG bursary scheme. Our sportsmen and women continue to make us proud by their sterling achievements against the best in the world in their respective sporting codes."

He has sent condolences to families of victims of the Life Esidimeni tragedy, saying it was a reminder that "Batho Pele" must not be a slogan, but rather the lived experience of the people.

"We must continue to restore the dignity of our people by incrementally improving both access and the quality of our service offering, particularly to those most vulnerable amongst us."

Over the next 12 months the ANC GPL Caucus has committed itself to the attainment of the following tasks:

- Strengthening the monitoring and evaluation role of sub-committees in holding the executive accountable in a constructive but robust manner.

- Expropriation of land should be implemented within the confines of the constitutional dispensation.  

- Focus on "deliverology" (discipline of execution) and institution building - to create and sustain the necessary capacity to deliver mega economic and social infrastructure projects timeously and cost effectively.

- Ensure that the party incrementally achieves compliance with national norms and standards for public schooling infrastructure and specifically ensure the eradication of asbestos schools in Gauteng.

- Strengthen the school health programmes and develop an implementation plan to give effect to a 24-hour access to provincial primary health care clinics.

- Direct the new MEC for Health to ensure the Health Ombudsman's recommendation on de-institutionalisation of mental health care is fully implemented including the corrective actions proposed in the report   

- Review, across all provincial departments and local government the package of social support to indigent households to ensure greater impact and efficacy through consolidation of this support.

- Adopt a coherent programme that consciously builds social cohesion and non-racialism, particularly among the youth.

- Increase frequency of unannounced raids by law enforcement agencies in crime hotspots and ramp up the implementation of Mega Human Settlement Projects.

- To develop an inter-governmental framework to ensure Human settlement planning is integrated into Municipal Spatial Development Frameworks.

- To promote and strengthen cohesive and coherent interaction between the Gauteng Provincial Government and municipalities for the full realisation of the GCR