SA inherited corruption - Mantashe

Johannesburg - South Africa inherited a "corrupt and a wrong value system" which it was currently managing, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Friday.

"What we inherited actually corrupted us and therefore we are actually managing a corrupt system and a wrong value system.

"The new order [after 1994]... inherited a well entrenched value system that placed individual acquisition of wealth at the very centre of the value system of our society as a whole," he said, delivering the Inaugural Violet Seboni memorial lecture at the Johannesburg City Hall.

Quoting former president Thabo Mbeki, Mantashe said:"Within the context of the development of capitalism in our country, individual acquisition and material wealth produced through oppression and exploitation of the black majority became the defining social value in the organisation of white society."

This was historic he said.

"Now because the white minority was the dominant social force in our country, it entrenched in our society as a whole including among the oppressed the deep-seated understanding that personal wealth constituted the only true measure of individual and social success."

Societal values have shifted from "revolutionary morality to material ownership".

The country needed reminding that life was not about "being in business".

"Youth must be informed about participation in academia, in politics, in trade unions, in NGOs [non-government organisations] and other structures and sectors that serve society if we dream of saving our society.

"Serving our people, not monetary accrual, is the definition of success."

Mantashe told the hall, packed with Congress of SA Trade Union members, that "prudence, modesty and hard work" should be the image projected by role models in society.

Seboni was second deputy president of Cosatu and she died in a car crash in April 2009 on her way to campaign for the ANC.

- Sapa