SONA Debates: Malema and Maimane deliver maiden speeches

Yesterday’s SONA debates certainly saw South Africa’s Fifth Parliament get off to a tempestuous start. So far, a lot has been said about Julius Malema’s maiden speech in Parliament with regards to the EFF leader clashing with NCOP Chair, Thandi Modise.

Modise rebuked Malema when he spoke about Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande’s factional battles with former president, Thabo Mbeki.

EFF leader, Julius Malema

Malema also said that because the police reported to the ruling government, "the ANC massacred those people in Marikana". He was referring to the 34 miners that died near Rustenberg in 2012. After refusing a point of order that he withdraw his statement, Modise said she would consider the matter and rule on Malema's statement the following day.

In her address, Human Settlements Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, did not waste time in cautioning the new EFF MP, saying, “Honourable Malema, welcome to this House, where [having] manners is a very important part of our conduct and where your tongue is governed by the rules of Parliament.” But amid the verbal jousting, what were the substantive issues that came out of Malema and the DA’s new Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Mmusi Maimane’s, speeches?

“Mr. President, you tried to speak about radical socio-economic changes in your speech last night but nothing you said was radical; instead we heard a repetition of what has been said before… “What is so radical about [the Expanded Public Works Programme]? What is radical about buying stolen land? Maybe we must give you a few tips on what is radical economic transformation,” Malema said.

"You must be prepared, if you want to advance this agenda of radical economic transformation, to expropriate stolen land without compensation, to nationalise the mines, the banks and other strategic sectors of the economy,” he said.

Later in his speech ANC MP Yunus Carrim said, “long before this party surfaced to claim the economic space solely for itself, the ANC members under the most brutal conditions of apartheid and under huge personal and collective cost waged the struggle for economic freedom.”

On behalf on the EFF, Malema, dressed in red overalls and gumboots, called for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into the mining sector in order to ascertain if mining companies can afford the R12 500 wage demands, but also to investigate the living conditions of mine workers. Malema wanted the Commission to make practical recommendations and set up time frames by which they could monitor improvements to the lives of mine workers.

As well as labour relations, Malema hit out at President Zuma about unemployment. "You promised jobs before and you repeatedly failed to create jobs. This is your legacy - you have doubled unemployment.”

Zuma’s comments on unemployment were also picked up by the DA’s Mmusi Maimame when he said, “How can [the President] say we are a nation at work, when millions of people are, in fact, out of work?”

Maimane added, “One-third of our people can’t find work. The youth of South Africa are worst affected by unemployment with nearly four in 10 without a job. And yet the extent of the unemployment crisis received no mention in the president’s address”.

ANC MPs began heckling Maimaine when he got onto the topic of the R246m of taxpayers money used to fund security upgrades at President Zuma’s private Nkandla residence.

"The public protector has spoken. The president has not… South Africa is very well versed in scandal after scandal that is attributed to our most prominent citizen, the Honourable President… Until the Honourable President fully explains himself on the undue benefit from state funds, to his personal private property, amounting to millions of Rands – South Africa cannot trust in his word,” Maimane said.

In response Sisulu took at pot shot at Maimane’s DA allegedly unscrupulous financial dealings when she said, “In this province, where the DA governs, R30 billion was spent on consultants, no doubt white cronies of the DA government. In this province, we have scam after scam that is readily covered up with the complicity of the media. Millions are spent by the City of Cape Town on a scam called the Design Capital. These millions could have been spent on shelter and proper sanitation.”

Prompting laughter from the house, Maimane delivered a blow to both the ANC and EFF when he said, "Just because a plan has [the word] ‘radical’ in front of it doesn’t make it a good plan, in the same manner that wearing a red beret doesn’t make you a revolutionary."

The State of the Nation debates continues in the National Assembly this afternoon. President Zuma will reply on Friday.