A hard-hitting attack on careerists in the African National Congress (ANC) and corruption in the public sector was made by President Thabo Mbeki in his opening address to the ANC congress yesterday.

He called for a moral renewal in society and an "RDP (Reconstruction and Development) of the soul" to wipe out these tendencies.

Mbeki said the ANC had to pay close attention to defeating careerists who had inserted themselves into the movement and brought with them unacceptable practices.

"These include the use of money to buy votes, the corruption of our organisational processes to capture positions of power, the use of the mass media to camouflage corrupt practices, and the consistent resort to lies and gross falsification to advance immoral purposes," the ANC's president said to loud applause.

SA Communist Party secretary-general Blade Nzimande found it unusual that the president of the ruling party would publicly raise such matters.

Mbeki also complained about corrupt public servants who had no commitment to serve the people. Discussions would be held with all the public sector unions with the aim of building a partnership with them to achieve delivery.

Mechanisms would also have to be put in place to enable the supervision and accountability of those deployed by the party to government.

"Many of these (corrupt civil servants) are members of trade unions that belong to our country's progressive movement. Yet their conduct at the workplace has nothing whatsoever to do with the furtherance of the objectives of our movement. Instead, it serves to undermine the attainment of these objectives.

"We have a continuing responsibility to root out corruption from the public sector.

"This is a critical factor in our struggle to achieve the goal of good governance, in the context of our effort to build the new democratic state."

Mbeki said government had a pretty clear picture of the incidence of corruption, which confirmed that all sectors of society, the public and private sectors, the unions and civil society, were involved in the practice.

The ANC national conference would have to consider whether the institutions established to fight corruption were performing as they should, and what had to be done to ensure that state organs lived up to their responsibilities. Mbeki said corruption would have to receive more focus if it was to be defeated.

ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe's report to the conference noted the ANC had not done enough "to root out corrupt practices that see poor people being forced to pay bribes for services they are entitled to or that resources which are supposed to assist our people to get out of the cycle of poverty end up in the pockets of corrupt individuals".

Motlanthe also said there had been a breakdown in leadership collectives and political cohesion.

National executive committee members failed to raise their views openly in the structures of the movement and then undermined decisions by leaks to the media, he said.

With acknowledgement to Business Day.