SOUTH AFRICAN President Jacob Zuma was urged yesterday to propel “radical economic transformation” ahead of his address to the nation last night.

In an editorial in the South African Communist Party’s (SACP) online magazine Umsebenzi, the party said Mr Zuma must remain focussed on the challenges still facing the country 23 years after the end of apartheid.

“He must present a clear analysis of our structural problems as a nation, and the way forward,” it insisted.

The SACP defined three linked problems: “Class inequality, which is further articulated along the lines of race, gender and spatial development and under-development, unemployment and poverty.”

The SACP has been fiercely critical of Mr Zuma’s government over the past year, following allegations that the wealthy Indian Gupta family had “captured” the state by influencing cabinet appointments.

But yesterday it joined the ruling ANC and allied union federation Cosatu in condemning voices of the opposition.

The ANC decried “individualised approaches that promote or prey on hatred of a person.”

On Wednesday Save South Africa campaign leader and millionaire Sipho Pityana gave a “real” state of the nation speech at St George’s Cathedral opposite the parliament building in Cape Town where Mr Zuma spoke last night.

But the ANC upstaged him, holding a “People’s Assembly” yesterday to outline 12 “urgent tasks” of the liberation movement.

They included reform of land ownership and the banking system in favour of the black majority, massive infrastructure and utility projects and economic development in townships and other depressed areas.

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