Thank you, hon Speaker. Last night, my ANC branch, which is called Sonya Bunting, convened a public meeting in a place called Bertrams, is closer to the CBD of Johannesburg. It is one of the suburbs which are populated by people whom a number of us would call illegal immigrants or foreigners. The purpose of that branch meeting was for the ANC to address the concerns and the fears and to take action to deal with these criminal attacks against defenceless people. I think this is a clear example - and I know that it is not just a unique occurrence - that ANC branches everywhere are concretely dealing with this scourge that is confronting us as South Africans. That is important. As the hon Minister of Finance has said, such things can never be solved by basically armchair politicians. I am talking about people who come here and pontificate instead of taking up the hard work of beginning to deal with this issue. That is one of the things that I think is important. Once again, the ANC is leading in that endeavour.
The second area, which I also think is important, is that the ANC- led government and the ANC have been upfront in condemning these criminal occurrences, because they are nothing else but criminal mobs and they cannot be disguised by any intellectual rhetoric that all of us can basically put together. What we have seen, hon Speaker, are all sorts of opportunists; they are criminals, looting and basically vandalising the hard-earned property of people who have worked hard.
There are other types of opportunists, these are intellectual opportunists. People who, with a stroke of a pen, can basically lay blame and condemn, and abuse first and foremost the ANC and the President of the Republic of South Africa. It means that should any natural disaster occur in this country, quite clearly, the hon members from the other side will blame the ANC. [Interjections.] For anything that is happening this country that is not going right, hon members from the other side blame the ANC. What I would like to hear from them is: How many of them, because they all stay in leafy suburbs, joined students and academics at the University of Witwatersrand who were also picketing and taking action against xenophobia yesterday?
One of the issues that are also quite important is the fact that it is easy to pontificate. It is much easier to sit down and write articles about how bad the situation is in South Africa, but the challenge for honest politicians is to take action, which is what the ANC is doing. Thank you very much. [Applause.]