On-going violent protests worry Zuma

President Jacob Zuma has voiced concern about the on-going violent protests South Africans engage in when raising their grievances to government.

He was addressing the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) gala dinner at the International Convention Centre in Durban Friday night.  

Zuma has called on the ANC and its alliance partners - the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and Sanco, to work together on common programmes of addressing the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality.  

"There are things that we have not done. We have not for example dealt with South Africans to move away from the mind set of saying if you demand something you need to break things."

He says the manner in which South Africans deal with their democratically elected government has to be different from how the oppressive regime was confronted.

"We certainly need to meet and discuss that change of mind as a broader movement and therefore identify the steps we need to undertake to build this country because we could not change South Africa overnight."

Zuma commended Sanco for managing to strengthen itself after years of infighting

Meanwhile, Zuma called on Sanco to ensure that it monitors the progress the ANC is making on the commitments it made in its election manifesto.

He says it must continue to constructively engage the ruling-party on action to take to speed up service delivery. The President commended Sanco for managing to strengthen itself after years of infighting in the organisation.

"Sanco is a civic movement which is supposed to be where the people are as well as the branches of the ANC, we ought to know if there was dissatisfaction in any part of the country and act first to address that matter so that we do not create an impression that this beautiful democracy is a problem."

He called on all alliance partners to unite and work together.

"No one will help us to do so but ourselves. If we are to achieve all of this we need to work for unity of the progressive forces particularly because the reactionary forces are trying their best to disrupt the process of building this country."

Zuma says in the next five years they need to build on the achievements of the past 20 years and fulfil the commitment made to grow the economy to create jobs.

- SABC