Midrand - South Africa's ruling ANC began a key policy conference on Wednesday, with President Thabo Mbeki acknowledging the twin scourges of poverty and unemployment had yet to be tamed.
In his opening address, the African National Congress president and head of state said many gains had been made since the party came to power with the fall of apartheid in 1994 but huge challenges remained.
A steep economic growth path and huge social spending did not mean "we have solved our historic problems of unemployment and poverty ... the enormous racial, gender and class disparities in the distribution of income, wealth and opportunity," he told the four-day gathering near Johannesburg.
The party's key challenge, the president added, was to "liberate (the masses) from the indignity of hunger and want".
But he said the ANC was being judged too harshly as 13 years were not enough to correct inequalities left by decades of colonialism and whites-only rule.
"It is not possible to solve problems that have accumulated over 350 years in the mere 13 years of our democracy," Mbeki said.
South Africa is enjoying its longest-ever uninterrupted period of economic growth but unofficial estimates show unemployment at around 40%.
Sensitive to the grumblings of its core membership, the party has placed social and economic transformation and land reform at the top of the conference agenda.
Some 1 500 delegates packed the conference, dancing and singing revolutionary songs beneath a banner reading: "Intensify the struggle against poverty".
Even though reassurances had been given that the conference would not degenerate into a leadership succession show-off, some delegates danced through the hall carrying a placard with the face of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Mbeki's second term as party leader ends in December, but he has yet to declare whether he will run again, with Zuma among those eyeing his job.
The president, who was also warmly welcomed, is often slated as too business-friendly while Zuma is punted as the candidate of the party's left.
Joel Netshitenzhe, head of policy in Mbeki's office, told delegates they had to discuss whether the current economic system was perpetuating inequality, and analyse the role of "monopoly capital" in encouraging growth and creating jobs.
He also warned against ANC members in government becoming corrupted by power and falling victim to "bureaucratic indifference" to the working class.
"We must develop tactics to prevent the exercising of political power destroying our value systems."
The conference is attended by ordinary ANC members as well as by those in government and business, and the party's coalition partners in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party.
Tensions within the alliance have been exacerbated by a huge public sector strike which has seen hundreds of thousands of Cosatu members boycott their workplace since June 1.
Mbeki counselled that a better life for all could only be achieved with all three alliance members on board but Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi appeared to reject his call with a fiery attack on the party's direction.
"The ANC cannot be content with the current order of things in which economic power still resides in a white minority while the majority are trapped in poverty and joblessness," he said in a speech to a health workers' union.
Recommendations will be submitted for approval to an ANC national congress in December.