In a wide-ranging interview with Business Day, Zuma said SA faced “extraordinary circumstances” and that “sacrifices” would be required to avoid job losses while everything had to be done to prevent businesses from going under.

He suggested further cuts in interest rates, curbing executives’ performance bonuses, and that workers donate a day’s pay to a fund to mitigate the effect of retrenchments.

The ANC president said: “every suggestion should be thrown into the basket” to shield SA from the ripple of the meltdown. Saving jobs was the paramount challenge of any new administration — which Zuma is likely to head — that takes over after next month’s elections.

“We have to come together and act decisively, so the pace of work in government would have to be changed if the new government wanted to hit the ground running,” Zuma said. “It’s not like the normal establishment of government…. You have this global economic meltdown.”

However, Zuma balked at a push by labour for a change in the mandate of the Reserve Bank. ANC ally the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has called for the Reserve Bank to forgo what it called a narrow approach of focusing on inflation targeting as the Bank’s central aim.

Cosatu wants job creation and economic growth to be included in the bank’s mandate. “That (the bank mandate) can’t be the starting point of discussions. We cannot put issues on the table now which will divide us. We need to hold hands,” Zuma said.

He also urged the government to “buy local”, a call made by Cosatu last week. “Buying local was raised by Business Unity SA. I think we should procure locally. There is logic in that kind of a proposal. In as much as people speak about globalisation, the effects (of the global financial crisis) are also forcing us to consider national interest,” Zuma said.

He said suggestions by some that workers accept pay cuts instead of losing their jobs as companies struggled to make ends meet would not be useful in the long run as it would probably be seen as an attempt to weaken already struggling households in poor communities.

Last week, business, labour and the government agreed on a framework to guide SA’s response to the global economic crisis. The plan is a combined effort to mitigate job losses and to cushion the poor from the harshest effects of the economic downturn.

SA’s trade deficit ballooned to a record R17,4bn in January as exports collapsed, signalling that the global recession will hit the domestic economy even harder than anticipated.

The framework does, however, call on the National Economic Development and Labour Council to facilitate continuing discussions between all the parties on monetary policy and the mandate of the Reserve Bank.

Zuma echoed Cosatu’s sentiments that the government should add caveats to rescue packages. The federation said some employers were using the global crisis to retrench wholesale, without making any attempt to limit the job losses.

Zuma concurred, saying the government “could not just throw money” at struggling sectors and it had to apply due diligence before any rescue package could be decided upon.

Yesterday, the South African Communist Party, often a critic of the government’s economic policy, called for “maximum unity”, saying the global crisis and its effect on SA was the key issue facing South Africans.

SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin said the effects on the country forced “government, labour and the private sector” to come up with plans to deal with the economic crisis. “Unless we unite, the social gains that have been made will be eroded.”