The ANSA alternative is based on 10 principles:

1. 

   Southern Africa's plan for Southern Africa
   It is led by the people
2. Autocentric development, based on domestic, human needs and the use of local resources
3. Regional integration, led from the grassroots
4. Selective de-linking and negotiated re-linking
5. Alternative science and technology
6. National, regional and global, progressive alliances
7. Redistribution of wealth to empower the non-formal sectors
8. Gender rights as the basis for development
9. Education for sustainable human development
10. A dynamic, participatory and radical democracy

Ideas are a powerful force once they are seized by vast numbers of people. The Alternatives to Neo-liberalism in Southern Africa (ANSA) initiative provides the building blocks for a common perspective on alternative policies and strategies in Southern Africa, which can bring about people-driven, sustainable, human development. ANSA is not an organisation, it merely provides stimulus, a direction for the countless localised centres of resistance and initiatives for alternatives to join forces and pressurise for change from a common perspective.

So join us and together we will shape a mass movement which will succesfully advocate for a radical alternative for (Southern)
Africa!

The tragedy is that, in Southern Africa, there is no reason for a single person to go without food, water or any basic necessity, and yet millions do. The region has enormous natural resources and the populations are relatively small compared, for example, to countries in Asia or Latin America. The tragedy is that these resources are utilised by foreign corporations and export-oriented domestic corporations in a system of global production and trade that impoverishes the people of Southern Africa.

The good news is that, despite what protagonists of neo-liberal globalisation want us to believe, this is NOT part of the ‘natural’ order of things, a ‘fact of life’. There is an alternative. Africa has liberated itself from direct colonialism and apartheid. Our next battle is against the forces of globalisation that seek to keep Africa in permanent bondage and to determine our own future in pursuit of development as defined and shaped by ourselves…..