Hon members, I have received a copy of the President's address delivered at the Joint Sitting on 9 February 2012. The speech has been printed in the Minutes of the Joint Sitting. I now wish to invite the hon Chief Whip of the Majority Party to speak. [Applause.]
Hon Speaker, hon President, hon Deputy President and distinguished members of this House, I have chosen to speak on celebrating 100 years of selfless struggle and intensifying the fight against the triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment. Hon President, we wish to commend you for yet another inspiring and visionary state of the nation address. Your speech, which was followed by millions of our people across the country, was characterised by clarity and conviction, and indeed gave South Africans a reason to believe, to hope, to be optimistic that a better life for all is possible. It raised confidence in the future of this country and gave an encouraging picture of a government that is sensitive and alive to the urgent needs of the people. It demonstrated a nation at work, holding hands to eradicate unemployment, inequality and poverty.
Thank you, hon President, for giving this nation a reason to believe that a better future is indeed possible, that a better South Africa is here. Your speech was indeed a fitting tribute to the 100 years of the glorious liberation struggle, which South Africans, united in their diversity, are celebrating this year. It made the transition from 100 years into another century palpable.
Hon President, on Saturday South Africa and the world recalled and celebrated the release of our icon, Nelson Mandela, from prison, marking the beginning of a negotiated settlement that produced our constitutional democracy. We congratulate your government and the Reserve Bank on the honour bestowed upon the father of the nation, Nelson Mandela, on Saturday by using his face on all bank notes. [Applause.] As Parliament, we shall celebrate his release and that of other political prisoners, together with Media Monitoring Africa and other stakeholders, when we celebrate our Constitution and declare 20 February to 25 February "Constitution Week".
The release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners makes February a South African history month worthy of annual celebration. This will assist our youth and children not to forget where they come from and the sacrifices which were made to give us the freedom we enjoy today. We want to use this opportunity to once again assure the father of the nation that, in the ANC, our constitutional democracy continues to be in good hands.
The ANC is the author and guardian of this Constitution. We shall continue to safeguard the fundamental freedoms of all South Africans, both black and white. Constitutions the world over are dynamic and subject to review. It is in recognition of this fact that this Parliament established the Constitutional Review Committee. This does not derogate from the commitment of Parliament and the executive to uphold and enforce the Constitution. The ANC fully supports the foundation that Madiba laid for nation-building and social cohesion.
At the 10th anniversary of the Sowetan's nation-building initiative, Madiba awakened us to the challenges ahead in definite and emphatic terms, and I quote:
Our nation-building efforts must undo the effects of three centuries and more of colonialism and racism. Many years will be needed to achieve the equitable redistribution of wealth to which we aspire. But having made a good start, the challenge now is to increase the pace of delivery to further better the lives of the people. We can face that challenge with confidence. By joining hands, South Africans have overcome problems others thought would forever haunt us. As we destroyed apartheid, so too can we defeat poverty and discrimination if we are united. Our confidence derives from the fact that South Africa is a country rich not only in natural resources but, above all, in its people.
Since your inauguration in May 2009, hon President, you have always had a clear vision and mission, informed by the wisdom of the founders of our democracy. Your 2012 state of the nation address provides the road map for the country and a comprehensive plan to address the triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment. This is the product of a disciplined mind, consistent work and adherence to revolutionary values and principles.
Regarding progress made, this journey began in 2009 when the ANC decided to focus on five priorities. These are education, health, rural development and agrarian reform, taking forward the fight against crime, and creating decent work. Although the ANC did well on these priorities, it remained concerned with poverty and unemployment; hence it declared 2011 a year of job creation through meaningful economic transformation and inclusive growth. Your administration introduced a New Growth Path that guided its work in achieving these goals.
Working within the premise that the creation of decent jobs is at the centre of your economic policies, you directed government departments, including the provincial and local government spheres, to align their programmes with the job creation imperative. You also embraced research findings, in terms of which jobs could be created in six priority areas, including infrastructure development, agriculture, mining and beneficiation manufacturing, the green economy, and tourism.
From the outset, you recognised that colonial oppression and apartheid degraded and dehumanised black people in general and Africans in particular. Thus, in June 2009, you told this House that the recovery of the humanity of all people had been a guiding tenet of the ANC for the many decades of its existence. You went on to say:
It will be a central feature of our shared efforts over the term of this government, because we know that working together, we can do more to build a great South Africa. Decent work and a steadily improving quality of life are essential for the recovery of the humanity of all our people. So too is empowerment through access to quality education and skills development. Safe water, affordable energy, decent shelter, and cohesive, secure and vibrant communities are similarly all important for the recovery of this humanity ... Central to this recovery of our humanity is also the need for access to economic opportunities and to earn a living.
Your linkage of the recovery of the humanity of all people and the five priorities of government demonstrated that your administration is rooted in the revolutionary morality of the founders of our movement.
The 2009 decision to establish the National Planning Commission revealed a desire for a holistic approach to the triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment. The release of the National Development Plan coincides with and reinforces the National Infrastructure Development Plan, which is a road map for the country and the plans outlined in the state of the nation address. This provides further evidence of your vision and resolve to make this country work.
The ANC agrees with the President that despite progress made, the triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment persists.
With regard to the roots of the triple challenge, the seeds of this triple challenge can be traced back to the forcible dispossession of land and its natural resources by colonialism and the introduction of racially discriminatory laws in both state and church institutions after the establishment of the racist, white supremacist Union of South Africa in 1910. The ANC was established by intellectuals and traditional and religious leaders on 8 January 1912 to respond to this colonial onslaught against African people.
The dispossession of African people of their land was consolidated by the 1913 Land Act, which allocated 87% of the land to the white minority. The confinement of African people to native reserves under this law, the adulteration of the institution of traditional leadership and of Christianity, followed by the creation of Bantustans during the 1970s, entrenched the inequalities, poverty and structural unemployment that the ANC inherited in 1994.
Soon after your inauguration in 2009, Mr President, your government made the correct determination in that the challenges facing the country could not be overcome through piecemeal planning, and took a decision to establish the National Planning Commission that has just produced a National Development Plan informed by our Constitution. The ANC welcomes this National Development Plan, which also singles out the triple challenge for consideration. Your determination, Mr President, that higher growth and job creation are the solutions is spot on.
Since your inauguration in 2009, you have adopted a holistic approach to the challenges inherited from the apartheid colonial system. This approach is consistent with the character of a developmental state that has a responsibility to lead and guide the economy and to intervene in the interests of the poor.
Informed by this responsibility, your administration launched the New Growth Path framework and identified job drivers as infrastructure development, tourism, agriculture, mining, manufacturing and the green economy. Pursuant to this plan, you declared 2011 the year of job creation and transformation of the economy and mobilised social partners, including business, labour and the community sector, to work with your administration in implementing the New Growth Path. This confirmed your commitment to the recovery of the humanity of all South Africans and the creation of a prosperous society.
The ANC fully agrees with you that by mainstreaming job creation and strengthening social dialogue and co-operation among government, business, labour and the community sector, you laid a sound basis for nation-building and social cohesion. The announcement of a massive infrastructure development plan and the invitation to the nation to partner with government in this drive will effectively address the triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment. The drive to develop a knowledge economy will enhance the efficiency of your infrastructure development plan by producing the skills necessary for government to work harder, faster and smarter.
With regard to co-ordination and implementation of programmes, the co- ordination and integration of plans inherent in the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission calls upon Parliament and political parties to ensure that it is driven as a national project worthy of support by all of us. This plan is a national issue that requires the co-ordination and integration of multiparty oversight work.
In this regard, we are happy to announce that the parliamentary oversight authority has agreed to strengthen and resource the multiparty Chief Whips' Forum as an integral organ of Parliament. This will enhance the oversight role of Parliament and ensure the successful implementation of the presidential infrastructure development plan. The multiparty Chief Whips' Forum will also establish an interparliamentary Chief Whips' Forum, which will bring together provincial legislatures and councils to ensure co- ordinated and integrated oversight on government.
For our part, as the ANC, we will capacitate our one-stop centre parliamentary constituency offices to enable them to drive regional and local people's assemblies. This new approach to constituency work will strengthen and entrench social dialogue and co-operation among government, business, labour and the community sector. The presidential infrastructure plan, including its social infrastructure project, will benefit the poorest of the poor and bring them into the mainstream economy. In terms of this plan, government could renovate unutilised and underutilised buildings in towns and townships and make them available for skills development, cultural industries and cultural tourism. This local economic development initiative could be strengthened by government's support for the development of marginalised and diminished heritages, languages and indigenous knowledge systems in order to unlock the full potential of historically disadvantaged communities. The plan could also enable cultural industrialists and small businesses to gain access to the markets.
The development of the African heritage and the indigenous knowledge systems, IKS, could position South Africa as one of the motivating forces of the African cultural renaissance. In this regard, the Mapungubwe cultural landscape, connecting South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and other Southern African Development Community countries, could contribute to Nepad's, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, regional and infrastructure integration agenda through the proposed Mapungubwe heritage route, connecting the SADC countries.
The intercultural regional integration through the Mapungubwe heritage route would combat tribalism, xenophobia and Afrophobia, as well as regionalism, and enhance African unity and co-operation. The improvement of the infrastructure at the Mapungubwe heritage site and support by SADC governments and parliaments of annual cultural festivals at Mapungubwe and related heritage sites are critical for the advancement of the African cultural renaissance and Nepad's regional integration agenda.
The ANC welcomes the convening of a presidential infrastructure summit and the proposed social pact and dialogue. We trust that the community sectors, especially organised interfaith bodies, the institution of traditional leadership and organised traditional health practitioners will be invited. The newly established National Interfaith Council of SA, Nicsa, has already begun preparations for the desired national dialogue.
Regarding the recognition of wars of resistance and the role of women in them, the undertaking of heritage projects is critical for nation-building and social cohesion. Therefore the prioritisation of memorial sites, including the Pondo Revolt, the sites of the frontier wars, the 1913 revolt by African women in the Free State and the 1957 antipass revolt by women in Zeerust, will reshape our history and correct the distortions of the past. Women and traditional leaders should indeed be recognised for their roles in the context of our selfless struggle for equality, freedom and justice for all - both black and white South Africans.
The prioritisation of memorial sites in recognition of women, in particular, deals a deadly blow to the perspective in our society today that there has always been inequality between women and men, and that women have always been subjects and were led by men. This perspective, as you correctly observed, hon President, is a product of the rise of a patriarchal society, which seeks to project women as subordinates of men.
In Southern Africa we have examples of the contrary. We have Queens Nzinga of Angola, Nehanda of Zimbabwe, Manthatisi and Modjadji of South Africa. The Modjadji dynasty has ruled from 1800 to date and participated in the wars of resistance and the Anglo-Boer War, now known as the South African War, of 1899 to 1902.
Women like Charlotte Makgomo Manya played an active role in the formation of the ANC and attended the founding conference of the ANC. But, as you correctly observed, hon President, little is said about these great women in the form of acknowledging their role and contribution in advancing the struggle of our people, in general, and the women's struggle, in particular. Charlotte and her husband established the Wilberforce Institute, named after Wilberforce University in the United States. The building built in 1892 remains neglected and dilapidated in Evaton.
We thank you for reawakening us to the value of our identity and heritage because a people without identity, history and heritage loses its self- knowledge, self-worth, self-esteem, a culture of self-help and self- reliance and the will for development and progress. The recovery of these values is what South Africa needs for the character-building of our youth and the creation of a productive and prosperous nation.
In conclusion, we welcome the initiative by our government to ensure that the Khoisan people and their indigenous knowledge are brought into the mainstream of this nation. I thank you very much. [Applause.]
Mr Speaker, hon President, distinguished guests, hon members, in our country today we often talk about two South Africas: the rich and the poor, the white and the black, the rural and the urban, and many more besides. These stories reflect divisions in our past that, until now, we have been unable to properly bridge.
But, today, while we are reflecting on the state of our nation, I believe we should be talking about how the South Africa we live in differs from the South Africa we dream about.
In the South Africa we live in we face hard realities. Millions of our people lack the means to live lives of their own choosing, communities are brutalised by violent crime, the burden of disease robs our citizens of opportunities, and young people without education or employment wake up day after day to a gaping void of hopelessness. In the South Africa we live in our problems are all too real and they grow bigger every day, their solutions moving further from our grasp.
But we do not have to accept this. I do not want to live in a South Africa in which you are locked into a particular kind of life forever, simply because you were born into it. And I believe there can be an alternative; another country of our making.
My fellow South Africans, our best years are ahead of us, and the party that I lead in Parliament offers a vision to get us there. [Interjections.] [Applause.] People are wounded in postapartheid South Africa, and it is difficult to focus on the future when the pain of the past can still be felt today. But as much as the past has shaped us, we cannot keep living in it. We need avenues to the future. So, our vision is to heal us.
Our history does not just remain in the past; it speaks to us and informs our decisions. And so we must be guided by our history, but not imprisoned by it. Our vision is to free us.
Our inability to achieve real reconciliation through economic redress is at the heart of our national discontent. Our vision is to build that opportunity. To bring people together, we need to build a bridge across the divide between privilege and poverty that divides our people along racial lines. We have to help people where they need it and provide real opportunity that will break down these inequalities. When we do that, we will achieve a real and lasting reconciliation. But our vision will mean little if a DA government does not offer the means to reach the future. [Interjections.]
Mr Speaker, I stand here today as the proud new leader of an opposition which is also a government-in-waiting. [Interjections.] [Applause.] Over the coming months and years, we will exercise oversight ... [Interjections.]
Order! Order, hon members!
... draft legislation and hold the governing party accountable for its outcomes. We will speak for the millions of South Africans whose voices have gone unheard in Parliament, and we will sketch for every one of them a picture of a growing and prosperous South Africa under a DA national government.
Siyazi ukuthi sibhekene nezingqinamba eziningi eziqondene nobugebengu, ukungaphephi nezinye zokuhlukumezeka nodlame. Ngiyacabanga ukuthi ngezindlela eziningi lokhu kuhlupheka emphakathini kugxile ekuswelekeni kwamathuba emiphakathini yethu.
Yize noma kunjalo, siyazi ukuthi zikhona ezinye izimbangela zalezi zinkinga. Siyazi ukuthi ngubugebengu obenza imiphakathi yethu ihlalele ovalweni. Lokhu kwenziwa wukungaqini kwezinhlaka ezibekelwe ukusivikela. (Translation of isiZulu paragraphs follows.)
[We know that we are faced with many challenges with regard to crime, such as safety, abuse and violence. I think that in so many ways, this suffering in the community is due to a lack of opportunities for our communities.
Even though it is like that, we know that there are other causes of these problems. We know that it is crime that makes our communities live in fear. This is caused by the weak structures that are meant to protect us.]
We cannot hope to keep our streets safe when the shadow of corruption stalks the highest levels of our Police Service. We cannot take the fights to the criminals that plague us when we lack experienced management at all levels of our Police Service. And we cannot hope to have an effective service that complements an open and free democracy when our police are militarised in name and in their actions.
South Africans will not feel safe until they hear an honest discussion about crime at the highest levels of government, nor will they have confidence in our health system, let alone a National Health Insurance scheme, until we face the fundamental problems that threaten it. This is because the problem in health is not the principle of access. The problem in health in South Africa is that our existing network of care is not adequately managed. What we need are competent and professional hospital managers who are not accountable to a bureaucracy, but to the hospitals themselves.
Real accountability and professionalism will go a long way towards addressing the deficiencies in health care. If these capacity problems are not addressed, our health care system will deteriorate even further, with or without an NHI, and it will be the poorest South Africans who suffer. So our vision is to address their plight.
To implement a real programme of redress that will build reconciliation and change our society, we must also have the tools of change at our disposal. To do that, a DA government will focus on the two things that can truly create opportunity: education and the economy. [Interjections.] These two are intertwined, as is the case with our failure or success as a country.
Since the consolidation of our democracy, much has been achieved in education. We have historic levels of access, a standardised curriculum for all our learners, regardless of race, and truly exceptional levels of budgetary investment year on year. But as much as we have invested, education is seldom the vehicle for opportunity that so many of our children need it to be. Too many of them become lost in a system that seems to have a measure of failure hardwired into it. South Africans don't have to live in the country if they choose not to. I don't believe that we should just celebrate access. We should celebrate children completing their education. Over a million learners enrolled for Grade 1 in 2000, but only half that number wrote matric last year, and just over 348 000 passed. That means just 33% of the children who started school in Grade 1 finished matric. Why is this? In disadvantaged schools teachers work on average three and half hours a day, compared to six and a half hours in advantaged schools. In disadvantaged schools, a fifth of the teachers are absent on Fridays and almost 30% of students are taught maths by teachers with no maths qualifications. If we compromise on our children's education, we accept a two-tiered school system as an unchangeable fact of life.
Education is the only way out for most people who want to work to have a better life than the one they were born into. I do not believe that we should accept that there will always be schools that are terminally dysfunctional or that there will always be some teacher who will not or cannot teach. There should be no such thing as compromising a child's future. So our vision is not to compromise.
Because education is the foundation of an economic strategy that seeks to build opportunity, I believe that we should give schools that are performing more power to manage their own affairs. We will direct maximum resources to the first three years of schooling and ensure that there is compulsory testing of learners in Grades 3, 6 and 9. We will maximise resources spending on schools that have gone without for decades, supplying them with text-rich content and books, delivered on time, before using money on bloated administrative functions. And we won't just make schools a place where our children are evaluated. They need to be taught by people who demonstrate not only their capacity, but also their passion for education. We will give those with this calling that chance.
Mr Speaker, most teachers deserve our thanks for their dedication and the work that they do. But just as teachers have rights, so do children. Our government will pass legislation that will respect teachers' right to strike, but subject them to certain limitations. Before a strike can happen, there will need to be consultation and agreement between the government, the unions and the school governing bodies.
In education, we need partners who are truly willing to help our children, every step of the way. So we won't forget about the majority of teachers who want to be part of our pact for the future. But in the dream of our future, fixing schools is just one part. If we can ensure that our children get the best education they possibly can, then we must ensure that they can enter an economy where they can find a job.
In several ways South Africa's economy has flourished in the democratic era, free of the shackles of sanctions, restricted trade access and warped internal economic policies. But the country we live in today has some very harsh economic realities.
We applaud any gains in the fight against unemployment and real indicators that show victory in this struggle. However, an expanded definition of unemployment, which includes those that have given up looking for work, shows that more than 100 000 jobs were lost last year. Furthermore, the last decade has produced only 624 000 jobs, meaning that total employment has increased at a rate of just 0,5%. This means that the rate of job creation would need to rise by nearly 10 times in order to meet the most optimistic projections of job creation for the end of the decade.
In contrast, one of our fellow Brics countries, Brazil, has an unemployment rate five times lower than ours, while we continue to experience lukewarm economic growth. Last year we grew at 3,4%, while Africa, the continent we claim to lead, experienced a growth rate of 5,5%. Countries in our region, like Angola and Botswana, are growing at 9,4% and 7,8%.
I believe that South Africa's major challenge lies in its competitiveness. We are less efficient than many of our emerging market competitors. Turkey, for instance, withdraws more value out of every rand from taxation than we do. Other governments simply develop higher returns.
In addition, South African labour is uncompetitive. Labour productivity is much lower than the rest of the developing world. Our competitiveness has slipped in key sectors like mining, agriculture and manufacturing. In mining, especially, we are not as profitable or as desirable as elsewhere in Africa. So, in the midst of a commodity price boom, we saw investment in the mining sector drop. Expensive and highly regulated labour kills competitiveness and it kills jobs. And increased state intervention in the economy bloats the public sector and creates inefficiencies.
A commitment to intervention for intervention's sake means that we have too many voices saying too many things. If investors wanted to predict what South Africa's economic policy was going to look like in three years' time, they would have to consult the New Growth Path, the National Development Plan, the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2 and the budgeting process, and try to understand the many contradictions between them.
I propose that we take our economy from being an average performer with massive potential to one that capitalises on our advantages to grow faster and assume the economic leadership role in Africa that we should have.
As part of our vision for South Africa, we will ease labour-market entry to include voluntary exemptions for designated economic areas. This will create a competitive niche entry point for first-time workers. Complementing that strategy, we would introduce a targeted youth wage subsidy for job seekers between 18 and 29 years old, earning below the personal tax income threshold.
Opportunity will also be spread to those wishing to start their own businesses. We will create a one-stop shop for business registrations where prospective entrepreneurs may register a company name, lodge their documentation with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission and register with the SA Revenue Service, Sars, and the Department of Labour.
Mr Speaker, opportunity must take stock of those who have been systemically and historically disadvantaged. One of the ways to do this is to ensure that there is true financial redress for those who were blocked from accessing economic opportunities in the past. That means making economic empowerment truly broad based. I think that our current model, which relies on arbitrary quotas, has done little more than expand the size of the financial elite by creating a special category of beneficiaries who can access economic opportunities again and again.
Our vision is to do more to help the average worker become an owner of capital. That means building into contracts the need for real partnerships between business and employees and incentivising share ownership across the economy.
Hon Speaker ...
What point are you rising on, sir?
I would like to know if the hon Leader of the Opposition will take a question. [Interjections.]
Will you take a question?
I will not.
She will not take a question. [Interjections.] Order, hon members! The question was not addressed to you. Please proceed.
Our vision is to do more to help the average worker become an owner of capital. That means building into contracts the need for real partnerships between business and employees and incentivising share ownership across the economy. And we will invest in infrastructure. This investment, when coupled with a sound financial strategy and real capacity in implementing agents, is the best way that the state can create the economic-enabling environment for growth.
But I think that we should also realise that the state cannot be the final determinant in the economy and that, as much as we invest in infrastructure, the state cannot have a holistic plan for every sector, especially when it is marred by incapacity. As such, a DA government will replace the current Industrial Policy Action Plan 2 with a streamlined industrial development and growth strategy that would focus on specific activities rather than on whole sectors, create targeted financial incentives for new enterprises and develop a dedicated venture capital fund.
We will address one of the most divisive legacies of our past: the legacy of the 1913 Land Act. We know that people who once made their living off the land were driven from it and forced into an economy for which the compounding sin of Bantu education deliberately provided limited skills. But land reform in our country is not working because of the incompetence and incapacity of the very institutions that are supposed to drive it. Our vision is to make right that wrong.
We will use the mechanisms at our disposal to create truly diverse rural ownership. And that diversity, again, is not about empowering a segment of society that is already empowered. It is about giving new opportunities to those who are without resources and who want to farm.
Somlomo, lo mbono omuhle uzonyamalala uma sizicabangela thina sodwa, singasebenzeli umphakathi nezwe lethu. [Ubuwelewele.] [Speaker, this good vision will vanish if we only think of ourselves, and not work for the community and our country. [Interjections.]]
Hon members, order!
Umbono wethu uzobuyisa isithunzi ekusebenzeleni kwethu imiphakathi. Isithunzi esizokwakhiwa ukuthi sibe nomdlandla wokusebenzela umphakathi, hhayi ukuzibonelela thina. [Ubuwelewele.] [Our vision will restore the dignity of the communities by working for them. This dignity will be built by being determined to work for our communities, and not only by looking after ourselves. [Interjections.]]
As the custodians of the state, we will ensure that we limit opportunities for corruption. As public servants we should be an embodiment of what is best about those among us who want to work towards the future, faithfully and honestly. That doesn't mean having the courage of our convictions only for the television cameras; it means working every day with integrity.
Key to our vision will be bigger penalties and better enforcement of punitive clauses in the Public Finance Management Act. We will introduce a National Business Interests of Employees Act to ensure that the partnership between the state and business is not through the businesses of those who work for the state.
The South Africa that we want is not born of false promises. Our vision will end the expectation that some generations will be lost. We will only be satisfied when we know that our children will have more tomorrow than we do today. The government must empower, not prohibit. It must provide opportunity, not encumbrance. We do not have to resign ourselves to this country that we live in today.
When we start accepting that we have the means to realise our deepest hopes and ambitions, we can make the country of our dreams a reality. That is the vision we offer South Africa today. We demand the future that we dreamed of in 1994 and, in our future, we will make it together. I thank you. [Applause.]
Hon Speaker, on a point of order, please!
What point are you rising on?
I am rising on a point of order in respect of the reference to the hon Mazibuko as the Leader of the Opposition. The hon Mazibuko and all the other ...
Hon member, that is not a point of order. [Interjections.]
No, it is a point of order, Speaker. [Interjections.]
Take your seat, hon member. [Interjections.] It's not a point of order. Please proceed, Mr Lekota.
Mr Speaker, I hope that you'll remember that minute that she took from my time. Thank you, sir.
Hon President, Deputy President and hon members, the National Development Plan identified a number of key problems that our country needs to deal with if it is to advance.
We are particularly attracted to the identification of the question of poor education as impacting negatively on skills development in the country. Our own approach is that, unless South Africa can transform its human resource element, unless we can transform the lives of many of the citizens of our country who are not only unemployed but unemployable, we will not be able to tackle effectively the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Mr President, we had hoped that a major part of the government's approach on this question would focus effectively on dealing with this question of training and education. For very many centuries, African people in this country have been denied opportunities of access to education and training, therefore making them less effective and less productive than what the country required them to be.
This is a singular issue that we need to address more than any other, because unless we indeed address it, we will not be able to expand the economy, we will not be able to make our people capable of dragging themselves out of the poverty trap, the backwardness and the squalor in which they find themselves. It is important that we return to this issue.
This is not to say, Mr President, that the issue you raised on infrastructure development is not of any significance. It is important. All it can do at the moment is arrest, for a certain period of time, the deterioration and perhaps assist in keeping stability, but it does not eliminate the fact that we continue to go deeper into a crisis of the unemployable and unemployability, which, at one stage or another, will simply not be controllable by us as a country. So, I would like to say that it is important that we should return to and revisit this issue from time to time.
This issue of unemployability, Mr President, is vital. A number of the social tensions that we are faced with in our country today have to do with unemployability. Many people that come to this country from other countries, especially from our continent, come armed with abilities and skills that our citizens don't have. When, therefore, they are taken in by the market, this leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of our own citizens who feel that their African brothers and sisters coming into this country are taking their jobs, because it is not immediately clear to them that this happens simply because we have not dealt with this incapacity to be able to take advantage of the opportunities which our country presents them with.
I would also like to say, Mr President, that you announced a very interesting and attractive programme of infrastructure development. Indeed, you spoke to the issues of the development of dams, roads and so on. These are vital investments and areas of work, because not only do you invest, but you are also able to realise returns in the years that lie ahead from such investments. At this time, when South Africa's deficit has grown to more than 3,5% already, we need investment that will give us returns because the money we have borrowed we have to pay back tomorrow. If we invest in investment that will give us returns, we place ourselves in a position in which we can meet the challenges of paying those monies plus the interest on it.
But there is a category of the investment you announced that I am not sure exactly how we are going to deal with. Is that also going to come from the expenditure for this year? You announced the investment in celebrating our history, building statues and graves and so on. These are very important elements of our history because, like all nations, we must do something about these issues.
Nevertheless, the question that I would like to pose is this: At a time when our deficit has grown and is growing at the rate at which it is, is the timing right? If we are borrowing money and investing it in those enterprises that are consuming and not giving returns, it has the effect of deepening our deficit. Is this the right timing? Our study and our look at some of the expenditure patterns of various other countries is that they tend to prioritise these issues in years in which their economies are performing very well and when there is surplus after national expenditure for year after year. Then you will have a surplus that you can apply to these consumptives or projects. It seems that we may perhaps get more light shed on this from the Minister of Finance when he indicates how much of our expenditure will go towards infrastructure that gives returns afterwards, as opposed to infrastructure that will not.
One of the issues we think needs a clear explanation from the President when he responds to our speeches relates, of course, to the issue of the youth subsidy scheme. You announced an amount of R5 billion to subsidise youth employment. The whole nation is now aware that, as things stand, there is a problem, because organised labour is concerned that such subsidisation will encourage employers to go for subsidised youth.
On the other hand, there is the problem of organised labour that may find that it is neglected and even dismissed. This tension seems to be the issue that has contributed to objections being raised by organised labour and the leaders of organised labour in that this scheme should not be implemented. I thought that you would be able to say something to us, Mr President, on this issue. Will we see the expenditure of this R5 billion in a manner in which it will answer this problem and ensure that we are able to benefit from the R5 billion?
Again, from the point of view of Cope, we would think that this money would have been best spent in investment and on training. Freedom, after all, must not be understood and should never have been understood as a season of gifts. It should be understood as an opportunity in which those who were denied opportunities of training and education are now rid of the chains that prevented them from getting this education; that therefore freedom means expanding to the fullest your talents, our children's talents. This is so that our children can leave if they can't get employment in this country and get employment elsewhere. If there are no businesses to employ them, they can start their own businesses. They would then be able to build homes and take their mothers and fathers out of the shacks and let them grow old in proper homes built by their own children. [Applause.]
With this R5 billion we must give to the children of this country - the children who are poor and who have nothing - training and education, something nobody can take away from them, something which, even if they went to other countries, they could use to earn an income and to send this income back to their motherland. Many are exporting their skilled labour to this country. When they earn their money here, they send it back to their own countries. But we are not preparing our children ...
Hon member, your time has expired.
Oh! Mr Speaker, sir. [Applause.]
Hon member, your time has expired!
I am going to buy an hourglass so that I'm ...
Hon member, your time has expired! [Applause.]
Hon Speaker, Xhamela, the hon His Excellency the President, Msholozi, hon Deputy President, Mkhuluwa, hon Ministers of state, hon Deputy Ministers, hon Leader of the Opposition, hon leaders of political parties, hon Members of Parliament, I address the head of state and all of us in this way because I am asking that today we should be introspective as a nation. As I point out certain things, I am pointing out facts of the matter. I am not trying to apportion blame for the sake of apportioning blame.
From this podium I have said before that the failure of government is the failure of South Africa, and the failure of all of us. What I have to say today, I say for the love of my country. When I speak, I do so to be constructive.
Mr President, we have heard your speech, your hopes and your plans, and we desire nothing more than to be able to have confidence in them. Yet, too much prevents us from doing so. How can we embrace hope when our leadership refuses to acknowledge the many problems confronting our country or the causes that lie at their roots? Year after year the state of the nation address shifts focus, without ever addressing previous failures.
Your Excellency, in this debate we must analyse all that you said last Thursday. But, increasingly, I feel that the measure of your leadership can be taken less by what you say than by what you do not say. Understandably, the state of the nation address will touch on the high notes of government, leaving much unsaid. But this year we have been left with the impression that our attention is being redirected away from the elephant in the room. There is a danger in that, for elephants can be unpredictable and extremely destructive.
It is therefore good and well - through you, Mr Speaker, to His Excellency - to say that our government is working with various provinces to improve governance, systems and administration. But the unspoken fact remains that two of our nine provinces have all but collapsed. Limpopo has been rendered bankrupt through corrupt activities and five of its departments have been taken over by national government. And when you, Your Excellency, and your government do the right thing by intervening, even members of your government say that you are doing that for political reasons. The administration of the state is in shambles.
It is fine to say that we are doing well with regard to the treatment of HIV and Aids. But the unspoken fact remains that South Africa has lost some 5 million people to HIV and Aids because of our slow and hesitant response to the pandemic.
One can say that we are expanding access to tertiary education by assisting students - which is plausible - to pay off their debts. But the unspoken fact remains that students are so desperate to secure admission that they are stampeding universities, causing injury and loss of life. For instance, a parent this year in Johannesburg lost her life as a result of a stampede.
In the Eastern Cape, the education system has completely collapsed due to maladministration and corruption, forcing our national government to intervene.
It is fine, Your Excellency, to say we will improve the movement of goods through a Durban-Free State-Gauteng logistics and industrial corridor. But the unspoken fact is that the KwaZulu-Natal department of transport has had to halt all major road infrastructure projects, while Durban has notched up R1,3 billion in bad spending. The Free State has sought assistance from National Treasury after identifying financial mismanagement and noncompliance in supply-chain management processes in its department of police, roads and transport.
Gauteng has also sought assistance from National Treasury to address the challenges in its health department, which is on the verge of collapse. It faces 101 legal claims, amounting to R235 million, owing to negligence. The IFP in Gauteng called for an urgent commission of inquiry to investigate this debacle because we, like every South African, want to know why this is happening, Mr President.
Twenty years ago there were many people in this country who felt that we black people were not capable enough to rule a country and administer a democratic government. That was one of the major fears during the negotiation process. That is why some people went to Perth. Some people felt that it was in the DNA of us Africans to be inefficient, inept and corrupt. I refuse to believe that.
Yet how do we explain the many nurses in our public hospitals who just do not feel the inner duty to respond to the needs of suffering patients? And what are we to say about teachers who do not feel the calling to spare energy and to double their dedication to teach our children so that, through better education, they may finally be emancipated from all that oppressed my generation and your generation, Your Excellency?
If the call of duty is not felt in these two fields, it should be no wonder that throughout the Public Service productivity and commitment are so low that they translate into poor delivery. What has disrupted the moral fibre and discipline of our people? What has happened? We know the answer, but we refuse to acknowledge it.
How, Mr President, do we explain the contamination of Public Service and commercial interests? It is fatal, and yet it is pursued relentlessly, from the lowest to the highest levels of government. Too many - and I dare say, the overwhelming majority - are trying to make money on account of holding public office, being in politics or exercising public power.
Corruption is the bane of our country, Your Excellency. It is a fundamental threat to our constitutional democracy. As former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, said:
Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a government's ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice and discouraging foreign aid and investment. Corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development. Yet, sir, you shy away from this issue. The unspoken fact is that corruption has seen the axing by you, sir, of two of your Ministers, Mr Sicelo Shiceka and Ms Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde, for which we all applauded your decisiveness. The National Police Commissioner, Mr Bheki Cele, is still suspended pending an investigation into corruption. His predecessor is in jail. The Speaker of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature, Ms Peggy Nkonyeni, and MEC Mr Mike Mabuyakhulu are facing corruption charges in court. The head of Treasury in KwaZulu-Natal is facing charges of corruption in court.
Remember, Your Excellency, that you took over the department of economic affairs, which I ran in the erstwhile KwaZulu government. You will also remember that I founded a bank there called Ithala Bank and you would remember that after you left, it was pillaged by MECs who gave loans to their wives to buy you farms. [Interjections.]
The recently released Manase report uncovers widespread and rampant corruption within eThekwini Municipality. High-ranking eThekwini municipal officials and politicians, including the former municipal manager Mr Mike Sutcliffe, and former mayor Mr Obed Mlaba, have been fingered in a damning forensic investigation into financial irregularities, fraud and corruption.
Last year, the former head of the Special Investigating Unit, Mr Willie Hofmeyr, told the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development that 20% of South Africa's procurement budget, between R25 billion and R30 billion, is lost to corruption every year. According to Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, South Africa is perceived to be becoming more corrupt with each passing year. That perception is rooted in reality. On a scale of 0 being highly corrupt, to 10 being very clean, we have fallen from a ranking of 5,1 in 2007 to 4,1 in 2011. The unspoken fact is that we are on the verge of joining the ranks of dysfunctional states, as the effects of corruption debilitate all spheres of life.
Mr President, during the weekend I saw this cartoon and I thought it summarised what I am trying to say, with all these pigs running for the trough. I hope that Hansard will print it as part of my speech. [Laughter.]
Then I ask the question, Your Excellency Mr President, how do we fix this? Surely not with more rhetoric, empty words and never-ending declarations of policy? I think we must have the courage to go to the root cause because it was you, Your Excellency, who on 30 December 2000, acting as chairperson of a committee of the South African government, signed a formal agreement with traditional leaders in terms of which the local government powers and functions of traditional authorities would be preserved. This was actually a promise which had been made before by then President Mbeki that there would be no obliteration of the powers and functions of traditional leaders and, if they were obliterated, you promised to make amendments. In terms of that agreement, it was agreed that chapters 7 and 12 of the Constitution would be amended.
It was you, Your Excellency, who did not bring that agreement to Cabinet for ratification, and it is you, sir, who bears the final responsibility for it having been breached and for the powers, functions, respectability, moral authority and social guidance of traditional leadership having finally been obliterated.
The question can be asked: What does this have to do with corruption? It is relevant because the core problem of maladministration, inefficiency and corruption is the disintegration of social cohesiveness, social values, rectitude, integrity, discipline and dedication to duty, which traditional leadership has been entrusted to promote and inculcate within our communities. Once that disintegrates, as it unfortunately has, what ends up in our government offices, hospitals and schools bears the hallmark of no one willing to pay a personal price to make this country a better place.
It was you, Your Excellency, who was charged by President Mbeki to champion and pilot the campaign for the moral regeneration of South Africa. I need not comment on that.
It was also you, Your Excellency, who was equally charged by President Mbeki to bring about the reform of our labour legislation to increase the flexibility in the labour market. That, too, ended in nought.
Why is that relevant, the question may be asked? It is relevant because our labour legislation and the lack of flexibility in our labour market have not only been identified by your government, sir - even when I was in government - as one of the major impediments to real economic growth and real employment generation, but also as a cause of the ongoing degeneration of a sense of duty and commitment in the workplace. Empowering trade unions the way you have been instrumental in doing, Mr President, has eroded the culture of hard work, discipline, productivity, dignity and self-respect which people like me have promoted and instilled in our communities for more than 60 years. This has compounded problems with problems.
It was your party, sir, which for 20 years made it its main political policy in South Africa to undermine social cohesion within our communities. Your party embraced and promoted the strategy of making our communities ungovernable - even townships ungovernable - spreading a culture of lawlessness and rebellion and destroying the black education system. The black education system was far from perfect, but its destruction replaced it with the roots of a phenomenon which is the common denominator of most of our problems. It brings together our irresponsible nurses, our indolent teachers, our ineffective public servants and all the youth with narrow- minded vision, distorted values and the wrong hopes, who were falsely lured into supporting the president of the youth league of your party, who said that I was an ANC factory fault. [Laughter.]
Mr President, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Every government has faults and shortcomings. None of us is perfect. The wise acknowledge that and correct them, but the unwise ignore them.
You correctly identify our sky-rocketing electricity prices as one of the factors which are thwarting all our efforts to develop an industrial basis and produce real growth in our economy. Yet we did tell you that funding the build programme of Eskom through tariffs was a mistake. We did tell you, Your Excellency, that it should have been funded by means of an international competition which would have brought into South Africa as much as R400 billion of direct foreign investment, while creating a much- needed and healthy competition amongst producers and distributors of electricity. We were ignored.
We said further that, if funded domestically, the build programme had to be funded through the national budget and not through tariffs, so that the rich would pay more than the poor. The way it has been done is to force industries and the productive middle class to bear a much greater burden for the investments than warranted by their actual taxable income. I am just giving this example as part of the same problem. That is the problem of doing things for the wrong reasons, including political reasons, and not for commitment to our country's and our people's best interests. I will add two more examples, because the magnitude of the mistakes there shows what happens when political thinking overrides national interest.
Under your leadership, Mr President, our country jumped into the Brics, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, group. Yet, to develop an industrial basis, we must manufacture export products which, in the final analysis, can mainly only be sold outside of the Brics countries and mainly in the regions which have been our traditional trade partners, namely Europe and North America. This shows how our priorities become confused and contradictory. Our priorities should be to ensure that the African Growth and Opportunity Act of the United States is renewed and expanded so that we can export our products there without duties and quotas, and that similar agreements are entered into with other markets where we can sell our products.
Another major policy mistake is maintaining the four retail bank policies and tolerating the collusion and other constraints of trade openly practised by our banks. Because of the lack of real competition, our banks are not forced to take risks they don't want to take, but force all the risky business onto the Industrial Development Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. This means that they choose to live only by the business which makes money with no risk, and the government, the taxpayers and our communities must bear the risk associated with promoting economic growth. It would seem as if your government, Your Excellency, has a greater commitment to serving the banks than the people we represent.
Mr President, you praise the trade unions and Sadtu as if they should be thanked for doing less than the full measure of their destructive capabilities. Praising the South African Democratic Teachers Union on Thursday for its diligent teachers was a step too far, I thought, Mr President, in placating the unions. [Applause.]
The members of Sadtu often abandon students nationwide to drive their own agendas. The ANC-aligned union continues to act like an organisation hellbent on destroying the future of our children. Sadtu should be rebuked, in fact, and not praised for their actions. [Applause.] Their actions have aggravated and deepened the crisis in our education system. Instead of acting like responsible educators, some members of Sadtu have, on numerous occasions, proven themselves irresponsible, unprofessional and unfit to educate South Africa's learners. The recent go-slow in the Eastern Cape, where education came to a complete halt, is a case in point.
Mr President, you mentioned that employment generation never recovered from the terrible knockout it received at the end of the seventies, but you failed to explain why that happened. You do not wish to remember that employment generation collapsed because of the call for sanctions against our country and for foreign disinvestment, which your party, Mr President, foisted onto South Africa and which I so vehemently opposed.
This was because nothing destroys economic growth more than sanctions. Strangely, your government and the ruling party, the ANC, have adopted the correct policy against sanctions being imposed on Zimbabwe for the same reasons, namely that they destroy the lives of the poorest of the poor.
History has proven me right and your party wrong. You admit that we have yet to recover from that self-inflicted injury, the same way that we have yet to recover from the self-inflicted injury of having disrupted the moral fibre and discipline of our communities.
But too much remains unsaid, sir. You make no mention of small businesses and how they will be assisted by government to help grow the economy and create jobs. You make no mention of the fact that the two sectors that should be booming right now owing to international demand, namely agriculture and mining, are in reverse, owing to government's many policy failures.
The unspoken fact is that the latest global competitiveness rankings of the World Economic Forum highlight how corruption, wasteful expenditure and government red tape are increasingly hindering business development, SMMEs and investment in our country. I want to have hope in our future. No one can fault what you have said. But how do you know that every cent of that money will be used to do what you said it should do, with this corruption? I want to have confidence in you, Mr President. I want to be able to believe that there is more than just words to your declaration of intent. But how much of what has been set aside by the state to achieve such lofty goals will actually fulfil its intended purpose? We know that when resources are made available, corrupt officials are already salivating. [Laughter.] One is completely galled by the conspicuous consumption of state resources by these people.
I fear there is a disconnect between government and the reality of everyday life for South Africans. It is impossible to have hope while the ANC refuses to recognise, acknowledge and mend the error of its ways. We must start by correcting the terrible injuries inflicted by ourselves, not by apartheid, not by the colonialists, not by foreign powers, but by ourselves, on the minds, strength and discipline of our own people.
We need to rebuild pride in our work. We need to build a sense of dignity in abiding by the discipline necessary to improve our conditions. We need to terminate the culture of dependency. We need to create a culture of real growth, which must range from what young people do to build their futures to how our enterprises understand that they have to compete and survive without relying on government crutches.
We need to re-establish the important role of traditional leadership throughout the country. We need to exact from each public servant the full measure of dedication that one would expect from a soldier in a war in which we are engaged for progress and development.
We must have a complete separation between public office and commercial venture and completely change our mindset in this respect. And, most of all, we must fire all those who do not comply with these imperatives, ranging from lazy public servants to corrupt officials, to nurses who do not nurse and teachers who do not teach. If we fail to attend to this basic aspect of our country's reconstruction and development, everything else is bound not to achieve its intended purpose.
Mr President, your address was good, but it lacked accountability on the crisis in health, the crisis in education and the crisis of corruption. What you said looks good on paper. But what you have not said can, in fact, prevent the fulfilment of the best-laid plans. I wonder where my brother the hon Andrew Mlangeni is. We both did matric in 1947. Do you remember that poem by Robert Burns "To a Mouse"?
But little Mouse, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!
Still you are blest, compared with me! The present only touches you: But oh! I backward cast my eye, On prospects dreary! And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear!
Msholozi. [Applause.]
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Mr Speaker, Mr President, Deputy President, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, on the subject of mice and men, happy Valentine's Day to all of you! [Interjections.] [Applause.]
I think it is very important that we listen to what the three leaders who have spoken before me have said. In broad measure, I think we have to take this as a measure that there is very little disagreement with the content of the state of the nation address, and that is a positive that we must take from it, because that is the platform on which we must build in this country. [Applause.]
Early on in the speech last week, the President framed a reference to the draft National Development Plan, NDP, which we released on 11 November last year. To better understand the context in which the NDP fits into the state of the nation address, I am going to share a few more details of this plan today. Indeed, the plan sets out the kind of country we want to build by 2030. The vision statement contained in the plan envisages - and it sounded like the hon Leader of the Opposition has read this, which is very good -
Now in 2030 we live in a country which we have remade. We have created a home where everybody feels free yet bounded to others; where everyone embraces their full potential. We are proud to be a community that cares.
It speaks of a country that is capable of transforming itself, and that is fundamentally important. So, clearly, what we want by 2030 is to have created a country in which we value one another, in which we value life and in which we value our communities. We value doing the right thing. We want to have created a home where everybody feels free yet bound to others. This plan is about what binds us together.
What binds us is a new story, a story for a better South Africa for all of its people, a story to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality, a story that changes the life chances of our people, particularly young people and women; a story that draws on our history, our experience and our traditions. And so, the plan sets out the high-level objectives of where we want to get to by 2030, as well as how the commission believes that we can remake our country in the vision of our Constitution between now and that date - not on that date, but between now and that date.
The plan also provides a great deal of detail on, for example, where we think a railway should be built, how to finance it and how to ensure that it functions optimally. We believe that these are critical end points to improve the life chances of our people.
When the commission was inaugurated in May 2010, the President gave it a licence to be bold, honest and critical. He explicitly stated that he did not want a commission that merely slapped his back. His faith was tested when the commission released a diagnostic document in June last year which presented a sharply honest and critical appraisal of our performance since 1994 and our failure to overcome poverty and inequality.
The draft plan that we unveiled in November is similarly bold and honest. If we do not strike out bravely, the cleavages in our society will simply deepen. The two main objectives we arrived at in the plan are that we want to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality. Consistent with the diagnostic report and the views of thousands of people who were consulted, increasing employment and improving the quality of education form our highest priorities in the plan.
In summary, the plan is as follows: a united country, where all citizens are active participants in their own development; a capable state that drives development, promotes ethics and serves the citizenry; a dynamic and growing economy that is more labour absorbing, providing opportunities for all, and supported by adequate infrastructure; an education, skills and innovation system that can develop the capabilities of our people and our country; and leaders who work together to confront and overcome our problems.
These five key themes run through the 13 chapters in the plan that covers the economy and employment, the economic infrastructure, a transition to a low-carbon economy, the rural economy, South Africa in the region and the world, spatial settlement planning, education, skills and innovation, health, social protection, citizen safety, a capable state, fighting corruption, and then: social cohesion, nation-building and transformation.
In crafting the plan, we also took into account a number of other factors, such as demographic and global trends that are profoundly changing our world. Our Constitution provides a basis for our policies. It states that South Africa belongs to all who live in it and that all are equal before the law. How do we make the Constitution a reality for South Africans? This should be the first question we ask ourselves every single day. How do we ensure that opportunities for each person are not determined by who they are or where they were born, but by their hard work, effort, skill, talents and opportunities that are open to them?
Ek wil vir die agb lid, mnr Lekota, s hy het mooi gepraat. Hy kan maar nou vir Dexter terug huis toe volg. Dit is reg. [Gelag.] [Allow me to tell the hon member Mr Lekota that he spoke well. He may follow Dexter back home now. All is well. [Laughter.]]
In all our encounters with thousands of people across the country the message has been clear: South Africans love their country. They are proud of their achievements since 1994, have faith in their democratic institutions and want to see greater success for their country. They are prepared to commit themselves to building a better South Africa. Our challenge is to make it possible for them to contribute to the South Africa that they want by 2030.
This plan is not a sermon from the mount. It is about identifying how people can be empowered to enable change. We need to reshape the expectations we have of government. We need to forge an active citizenry that takes ownership of the solutions to our problems. I want to say to the hon Leader of the Opposition that it is not just about dreams; it is about living out those dreams. It is about making sacrifices. [Interjections.] There is a great philosopher named Peter Tosh who once said, "Everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die." [Laughter.] [Applause.] You have to be prepared to make the sacrifices.
The plan is about achieving this shift - I have done it, and I will do it again. [Interjections.]
Let's stop the corruption! [Interjections.]
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: The plan is about achieving this shift in perspectives and relationships. [Interjections.] Excuse me. Excuse me.
Order, hon members!
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: The plan is about achieving this shift in perspectives and relationships. It also contains very specific recommendations. For example, in the chapter on an integrated and rural economy, we focus on support systems that will give life to land redistribution. We need to put land to productive use. We estimate that agriculture has the potential to create close to a million jobs almost immediately if these plans are implemented effectively. To achieve this, we need to do a few things urgently.
We must expand irrigated agriculture by substantially investing in water resource and irrigation infrastructure. We must create security of tenure for communal farmers. This is vital if we are to secure incomes for existing farmers and new entrants. We must investigate flexible systems of land use for different kinds of farming on communal lands. We need also to invest substantially in providing innovative market linkages for small- scale farmers in the communal and land reform areas, with provision to link these farmers to markets in South Africa and further afield on the subcontinent.
We must put in place preferential procurement mechanisms to ensure that new entrants into agriculture can access the "food away from home" market, including school feeding schemes and other forms of institutionalised catering. We must give greater support to public-private partnerships to develop underexploited opportunities. Examples of regions with untapped potential include the Makatini Flats and the Umzimvubu Basin in the Eastern Cape.
Next year, as the President reminded us, marks the centenary of the 1913 Land Act. This Act reshaped the political geography of South Africa in dramatic ways. It transformed spatial settlement patterns in both rural and urban areas, effectively cutting off the vast majority of South Africans from places of economic opportunity. The chapter on the rural economy makes detailed proposals on how land reform can be unblocked and implemented in a collaborative manner, with clear roles for district municipalities, communities and farmers.
The chapter on transforming urban and rural spaces spells out why and how we can unravel the spatial patterns of apartheid that still plague us. There are parts of this country that still look as though they are still dominated by the Group Areas Act. Transforming human settlements is a large and complex agenda, requiring far-reaching policy changes. Most state investment goes into household services. Over time, the state should shift its role from a direct housing provider to a housing facilitator, developing public goods through investment in public transport, economic and social infrastructure and quality public spaces.
The plan addresses how we can transform where people live; how we can break the pattern of government building soulless little boxes and, instead, facilitate the development of communities. We want to link where people sleep, pray and play with where they work. We want to develop communities, understanding that the quality of life for many is undermined by the fact that they must travel great distances to get to and from work.
Our proposals on urban areas include developing a more coherent and inclusive approach to land. All municipalities should be encouraged to formulate specific land policies, showing how vacant and underused land will be developed and managed to achieve wider socioeconomic objectives. Our plans include radically revising the housing finance regime by shifting funding away from building single houses to supporting the development of a wide variety of housing types with different tenure arrangements, including affordable rental and social housing. They include the strengthening of the link between public transport and land use management with the introduction of incentives and regulations to support compact mixed-use developments. They also include enhancing the existing national programme for informal settlements by developing a range of tailored responses to their upgrade, including minimum health and safety standards.
We need strong and mature leadership, both in government and from communities, to achieve the unity and common purpose required to see the plan through. Leadership is about problem-solving. We need initiative. We need voice. We need to test ideas. We can and should all be leaders in our society. We can all implement the solutions that we have collectively identified. This requires us to change the way we approach challenges. It requires a paradigm shift. This is what we propose in the plan.
In coming up with the solutions, the commission has drawn strongly from definitions of development that focus on creating the conditions, the opportunities and the capabilities that enable people to lead the lives that they desire. Development is a process of raising the capabilities of all citizens, particularly those who were previously disadvantaged.
The development of capabilities is critical to enable our youth to grasp the opportunities that we develop. Education and skills development are critical capabilities, but there are others, too. Better public transport, a well-designed social safety net, a healthy population, better located housing settlements and safer communities are critical to enable people to improve their own lives.
The plan therefore charts a new course. This new course is one where communities, in partnership with government, develop the capabilities to improve their own lives through education, employment, health care, transport, social security and safer communities. At the same time, we have to broaden the economic opportunities available to citizens. This requires faster economic growth, a more labour-absorbing economy, higher levels of investment, inclusive and integrated rural economies, and better located human settlements. While we build these capabilities for both individuals and for the country, we must do so mindful of the impact on our environment, which is an endowment we cannot destroy.
The shift from a delivery model to a capabilities one requires three complementary enablers. Firstly, it speaks of an active citizenry, where people are involved in their own development and in the development of their community.
The second enabler is a capable and effective state, able to understand when and where it needs to act, what its limitations are, and how to partner with other forces in society to achieve complex objectives. The third enabler is strong and mature leadership from all institutions in society.
An active citizenry, working in partnership with government, business and civil society is critical to this new development paradigm. While the state can build schools, we need communities to work with the schools to ensure that these schools function properly and that the children study hard. Our paradigm becomes one where communities are active in their own development.
The challenge we face in our education sector illustrates this point well. There is universal acknowledgement that our education system fails the poor. Members may have seen the short animated story that the commission produced about a young girl named Thandi - it is available on YouTube - to illustrate the impact of circumstances on the life of a young school- leaver. Our plan is about improving the life chances of people like Thandi. This covers improving the education system to making sure that more school- leavers get jobs. Achieving this requires a collective effort. We have to talk to one another and draw on the energy of those who are committed to finding solutions. And, yes, we will leave the naysayers behind.
We hope that the proposals in the plan will be taken in the spirit in which they were designed: an honest and open-handed attempt to tackle the deep- seated problems that bedevil our society.
This process has been a unique one. It was a bold and brave step by the President to appoint a commission of people from outside of government, South Africans who care deeply about their country, to help develop a national plan. He has shown remarkable confidence in our institutions of democracy to embark on such a process.
I would like to say to the President that we are still engaging with South Africans on the proposals in the plan. This is both a heartening and a humbling experience. It is heartening because so many of our fellow citizens share our broad approach, support the values of our Constitution and agree with the key priorities that we have outlined; humbling because we, the commission, know so little about so many of the issues. Our discussions have been hugely enriched by the considered and often detailed views of ordinary South Africans on how to solve some of our most critical challenges.
We look forward to engaging with Parliament and for Parliament to facilitate further engagement on the proposed plan. In June or perhaps July, we will take the refined document back to Cabinet for discussion and, hopefully, adoption.
The work of the National Planning Commission does not end this year. After the plan is presented to Cabinet in a few months' time, the commission will begin detailed work on perhaps two or four areas a year so that we can complete the detailed ...
Hon Minister!
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: ... work within the next three and a half years.
Allow me to end with a little quote from the Vision statement:
South Africa belongs to all its peoples.
Now, in 2030, our story keeps growing as if spring is always with us.
Once, we uttered the dream of a rainbow. Now we see it, living it. It does not curve over the sky. It is refracted in each one of us at home, in the community, in the city, and across the land, in an abundance of colour.
When we see it in the faces of our children, we know: there will always be, for us, a worthy future.
Thank you very much. [Time expired.] [Applause.]
That was a very long poem, Minister.
Hon Speaker, in his state of the nation address, the President gave the nation a glimmer of hope. We welcome, in particular, the President's endorsement of the National Development Plan, NDP. The challenge for the President's vision, plans and strategies for this country continues to lie in their implementation and in real delivery. We do love this country and, together with the President, we want it to work.
Ons is lief vir hierdie land en, saam met die President, wil ons h dat dit moet werk. [We love this country and, together with the President, we would like it to work.]
We would like to assure you that we support all efforts made by government to construct a clear plan for our country's future. We therefore place much hope in you, Mr President, to make this plan a reality for us.
At the inaugural meeting of the National Planning Commission, on 11 May 2010, the President stated, and I quote: The establishment of the National Planning Commission is our promise to the people of South Africa that we are building a state that will grow the economy, reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of our citizens.
As we as Members of Parliament are concerned about the funding of these projects, we will use our oversight role to ensure that no one will use your announcement, Mr President, as a platform to loot state funds from the poor.
The state must play a leading role in economic growth in partnership with the private sector. When we speak, we speak about jobs, jobs, jobs; poverty, poverty, poverty; and opportunities for all. What then is the role of the state? We call upon the ruling party to stop undermining our new democracy, because our previous hopes were dashed by this government's willingness to sacrifice development at the altar of patronage.
Mr President, we also note with interest that many of the infrastructure plans you proposed are actually old, repackaged proposals. We are glad that you have finally agreed to implement them.
The government has constructed a number of large macroeconomic plans, which now lie scattered across our 18-year-old democracy. In 1994 we witnessed the birth of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, RDP. By 1996, as a means of reducing our debt burden, the RDP was succeeded by the Gear, Growth, Employment and Redistribution, strategy. These have been succeeded by the New Growth Path and the National Development Plan respectively.
However, defining the success of these plans is a thorn in our nation's flesh. The unholy wedlock between the ruling party and the labour unions also highlights the irreconcilable and ideological paralysis that constrains government's ability to get serious about implementation. It appears to us that government is perhaps better at building plans than building a nation.
Dit wil voorkom of u regering miskien beter is met die bou van planne as met die bou van 'n nasie. [It seems that your government is perhaps better at building plans than building a nation.]
It is also critical that government sticks to its core function of creating an enabling environment for us in the private sector. This will allow South Africans to take hold of their own economic future.
Finally, we would like to invite the President to make a choice today. Does his allegiance lie with factions inside the ruling alliance or does it lie with the people of South Africa? Today we appeal to the President to choose in favour of the people who commissioned him to lead our country. I thank you. [Applause.]
Kuthiwa khetha, Mongameli. [They are saying "choose", President.]
Mr Speaker, hon President and Deputy President, hon members, for many years resource allocation in South Africa was determined on the basis of race and ethnicity. The deleterious effects and the scars of the policy of segregation are still clearly visible almost two decades into our democracy. Since we ushered in our new democratic dispensation in 1994, the majority of citizens have pinned their hopes for a better life on the new political franchise.
Sadly, the level of inequality between the haves and the have-nots has increased rapidly. The solutions on the best way to close this gap and integrate the previously disadvantaged communities into the economic mainstream appear elusive. Apologists of this current economic regime claim that the macroeconomic fundamentals are in place and, thus, see no need to deviate from the status quo. They militate against any form of government intervention in the economy to transform it.
We question the validity of this line of argument, since the majority of citizens continue to occupy the margins of economic activity. In contrast to the minority group which controls the South African economy, the majority of citizens are victims of the ultraconservative credit policies of financial institutions because they do not own land.
The fight for economic freedom has been a bone of contention for many years and, at times, resulted in an unnecessary loss of life. You and your Deputy President spent many years on Robben Island in pursuit of precisely this economic emancipation objective, among other objectives. As students of the former University of Transkei in 1979, in the Faculty of Management and Economic Sciences, we used to grapple with the difficult challenge of finding a suitable mechanism to deliver economic freedom to Africans. Even today the solutions to this challenge are still proving more difficult to find.
We acknowledge the statement made by the Minister of Finance in the 2011 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement on the need to transform the economy. However, the question remains: by whom and when?
The 2012 state of the nation address clearly demonstrates that government has finally woken up to the reality that the fate of South Africans can no longer be left to the free-market system alone. Government has a duty to invest in its economy through projects like infrastructure development. The private sector seems to have no willingness to invest in the development of the infrastructure of previously disadvantaged communities.
Even companies that have the capacity to do so, like Anglo American, delisted from our stock exchange in favour of foreign ones without any prospect of the funds coming back to the South African economy.
Perhaps, in line with your statement during the ANC centenary celebrations in Mangaung at which you called for a national dialogue on the country's pressing issues, as leaders of political parties represented in Parliament we should meet with you and the Deputy President at your offices to map out a clear strategy to deal with what you aptly described as the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment. These problems are bigger than one political party.
In the event of a consensus emerging from such a meeting, we should expand the dialogue to other stakeholders in society as well. The historical legacy of severe imbalances and backlogs cannot be adequately addressed by Nedlac, National Economic Development and Labour Council, partners alone.
The people care less about frivolous fights to augment political power through attempts to change the powers of the Constitutional Court, the building of a veil of secrecy between the state and its people through the Secrecy Bill and attempts to erode media freedom, and more about wanting to see us prioritising their bread-and-butter issues.
Many South Africans often argue that a review of the Codesa agreements - Codesa being the Convention for a Democratic South Africa - should not be done selectively, as they believe that there are other more important matters for discussion, like the sunset clauses that robbed them of an opportunity to participate meaningfully in the economy and own land. Black South Africans are still residing in the so-called reserves that were allocated to us by previous regimes, with no land ownership.
Yes, Mr President, I have yet to see a day when people protest to change the powers of the Constitutional Court. But I have seen many legitimate protests about service delivery which do not seem to receive the same attention. We have noted government's intervention in a number of provinces to rescue them from administrative collapse. This sphere of government seems to be saddled with problems.
Provinces have become centres of self-enrichment and rampant corruption for some comrades. We have seen a regression in the standard and quality of education our children receive under the watch of provincial governments. In the past, for instance, it was common for students from all over the country to go to places like the Transkei to access quality education. Regrettably, that fountain seems to have dried up.
Perhaps it is time to publish the study government instituted under former Minister Mufamadi into the efficacy of provinces. The truth of the matter is that these glorified homelands were a compromise intended to accommodate one political party. We must now assess the extent to which they facilitate or impede service delivery.
Nevertheless, Mr President, your announcements last week reinforced programmes that were announced earlier by Transnet and the Minister of Transport, which we regarded as pie-in-the-sky projects when they announced them. Both Transnet and the Minister were cagey at the time of the announcements about how they would finance these projects. We wondered whether a thorough feasibility study had been undertaken.
Mr President, you will recall that when the news about these projects surfaced, the media alleged that they would be done by Chinese companies and politically connected individuals in South Africa. However, the government flatly denied this.
We look forward to receiving more details about the government's overall implementation strategy. We would do well to adopt as stringent a monitoring mechanism as Fifa's close monitoring of South Africa's implementation of the 2010 Fifa World Cup project, otherwise these announcements run the risk of going down as just another laundry list of unfulfilled promises.
It is gratifying to see that you have heeded our call to link KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape Corridor. Planned properly, this would ease the congestion and reduce road fatalities on the N2, especially if a railway line could be built between East London and Kokstad.
With respect to the Umzimvubu Water Scheme, the former Transkei government and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Maohludi Associates and academics from the former University of Transkei conducted and concluded a R13 million study into the possibility of using the Umzimvubu Water Scheme to provide clean water for household consumption and water supply for irrigation and hydroelectric schemes. The study showed that major rivers passing through the Transkei areas constitute 28% of the water supply of the entire Southern Africa.
We urge your government to guard against wasting taxpayers' money on hiring consultants to redo the study. Rather, we should source the services of an auditing firm to carry out a thorough cost-benefit analysis of reviving the project, taking into account cost escalations over the years. This exercise should also evaluate the effects of silting caused by soil erosion. Therefore there is no need for a two-year or more study.
The Umzimvubu Water Scheme project failed to get off the ground due to the refusal by the former F W de Klerk government to release funds for capital projects to the Transkei government because of its close relationship with the liberation movements.
Senditshilo. [Kwaqhwatywa.] [I have already said this. [Applause.]]
Hon Deputy Speaker, the commitment towards infrastructural development is most welcome. We certainly hope that its spin-offs will enhance many other areas of concern, like job creation.
The amount of R300 billion is a significant amount to commit to infrastructure. It is sure to excite South Africans.
We earnestly hope that this huge commitment of money will not excite the minority tenderpreneurs who will see an opportunity to make more millions, while the rural poor are condemned to extreme poverty. We hope this amount will not perpetuate the gross economic inequalities that we are already experiencing. It would have been comforting if the President had briefly outlined how the infrastructure development commitment would impact on, and improve, the standard of living for the rural poor.
In and prior to 2010, there was a buzz of infrastructure developments. Of course, we now have world-class stadia, hotels and beautiful bridges. We welcome the improvement, but the rural communities in which the majority of our citizens reside are still without roads and their living conditions have not improved.
It appears that government has taken significant strides in addressing the energy crisis in our country. It is impressive that thus far 220 000 solar geysers have been installed, and the targets set are encouraging. However, those of us who represent the rural constituencies know that even before you speak of energy-efficient tools, there are people who still do not have electricity and therefore energy efficiency becomes meaningless to them. This must be heard and treated with equal urgency as energy saving and efficiency.
South Africans had reason to be excited last year with the introduction of the Presidential Hotline, where they could lodge complaints and forward their grievances. There are allegations in the media that nothing is ever done about the cases reported. We expected the President to take the opportunity of the state of the nation address to cite cases that had been investigated since the commencement of the hotline. His failure to update us on this makes us think that perhaps we have been taken for a ride in that nothing will come of the hotline, and that it was another populist stance.
The President rightfully commended the increase in the matric pass rate. Of course, many of us are happy to see this improvement. He further acknowledged the problems in our education departments which, in the Eastern Cape, had led to the intervention and takeover by the national government.
This is, indeed, a crisis, and our education system has been in crisis mode for a long time now. We do not expect the President to go into the details of problems encountered by government departments, but seeing that education is one of the priorities, we expect that he should touch on the root causes of the many problems in education. His failure is disheartening. We have, for a long time now ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]
Madam Deputy Speaker, while the specific focus on job- creating economic growth is welcomed, it is unfortunate that another priority issue for South Africans received scant recognition in the state of the nation address.
The World Bank's Second Investment Climate Assessment found that South Africa has attracted considerably less foreign direct investment than comparable economies in East Asia because the country is seen as a riskier location for investment. Among the factors feeding this view is the perception that crime is more prevalent in South Africa than elsewhere.
Yet in a 5 000-word address, the safety and security of South Africans and their communities received a mere 65 words. Yes, the slow decrease in incidents of serious crimes is commendable and the efforts in this regard must be applauded. However, the number of serious crimes committed annually remains above the two million mark, where it has been for 17 years. This is unacceptable, more particularly as it is the poorest of the poor that feel the impact of crime the most.
The wellbeing of our citizens and communities is not a matter of statistics, but speaks to the very fabric of our society and the efforts to accelerate economic development to address unemployment, poverty and inequality. We require a bold new vision to ensure the safety, security and stability of our society, as well as the creation of an environment in which economic growth and development can continue unhindered. This is our common struggle.
Instead, we are veering towards a security state marked by this government's increasing obsession with a traditionally defined concept of national security. The vehement defence of the Secrecy Bill, controlling the courts and legislative attempts at granting the intelligence services even greater powers are symptomatic of this obsession.
A radical and conceptual policy shift is required to focus our collective efforts on the human security of South Africans, where the proper emphasis for safety, security and stability is on the individual and communities rather than the state.
We need to empower citizens and the citizenry to take back their communities and their societies. We need a caring and responsive government that will adopt and implement programmes rooted in this people-centred view of making South Africans safe.
It requires government to create a climate that empowers local people and communities to take charge of a collective civil responsibility to protect themselves and one another. It speaks of shared efforts of all South Africans to bring about a unified and safe society, where personal safety and the absence of fear from violence allow for our citizens to flourish.
The sustainable safety and security of our society and the prevention of crime require close co-operation between government, the police and communities to share resources and information and develop specific initiatives for local circumstances.
South Africa boasts a strong civil society and active communities, yet their involvement in taking ownership of their own safety and security receives little official encouragement. Citizens, businesses and institutions in the private sector should be encouraged to involve themselves in the war on crime and their contributions should be acknowledged and harnessed. The DA believes that this can be done in a concrete and sustainable manner.
Government should actively encourage community involvement by empowering communities to set up and manage their own community safety initiatives, such as neighbourhood watches and patrols. Many farming communities have risen to the challenge in this regard, but they do not receive adequate state support through funding, training and equipment. Local police services should be provided for where local councils have the means and desire to establish these, in co-operation, obviously, with the SA Police Service. We need less centralisation and a more diffused, distributed, personalised set of interactions and engagements that allow local services to give dedicated attention to particular problems in specified areas.
We need to empower community policing forums with more oversight over their local police stations and give them greater independence by enabling them to access funds to set aside for safety and security initiatives at the local level.
Creating meaningful and effective partnerships is pivotal in ensuring collaborative initiatives and actively facilitating private sponsorships. Regulatory frameworks, such as the SAPS Act, should enable public-private partnerships, and local governments and communities should be permitted and encouraged to collaborate with the police to solve problems at the local level. A prime example of how effective this can be is Crime Line, a Primedia Group initiative that empowers individuals and communities to advance their safety and security through anonymously reporting crime and suspicious activities.
Our society and interpersonal relationships are being eroded by drug abuse and threats to personal bodily integrity and dignity. We need to see a commitment from this government to re-establish the highly effective disbanded specialised units to fight drug abuse and related crimes, as well as family violence, child abuse and sexual offences.
Government must also bring citizens in rural South Africa on board in the fight against crime and the threats to the security of their communities by creating a new specialised rural safety unit. Every farmer or farm worker that is murdered impacts directly on the rural economy, compounding the decay of rural communities.
Finally, the regular sharing of official information on crime and community safety is necessary to adequately empower communities to locally address crime and challenges to safety in their communities. This can and must be facilitated by implementing communication sharing systems, including SMS and other electronic communication devices.
South Africa, Mr President, stands firm and ready to heed the call made in the state of the nation address to join hands and deal decisively with the challenges our society faces. Government must, similarly, extend its hand and provide meaningful opportunities for South Africans and communities to proactively take charge of their own destiny, safety, security and wellbeing.
The President set out in his speech steps to enhance growth through an infrastructural investment programme. It is time for him now to set out a similar strategy to ensure the safety and security of our citizens. If he fails in this regard, the desired economic growth will not occur. I thank you. [Applause.]
Hon Deputy Speaker, His Excellency the President, the Deputy President, Ministers and Deputy Ministers, hon members and guests, sanibonani, siyabulisa, dumelang, sthokoze, goeiemiddag [good afternoon].
Through you, Speaker, to the hon President, I joined the ANC in 1956 at 20 years of age. I joined because I believed that the struggle for our liberation needed each one of us. It was not a difficult decision because the values and nobleness of the movement, and its campaign to liberate the nation from oppression and discrimination, were things I believed in.
This year, we are celebrating 100 years of the ANC, a milestone few liberation movements achieve. We owe the progress, development and survival of this glorious movement to the core values and principles on which it was founded. Frustrated by the massive oppression of the African people in the land of their birth and by the draconian regime which sought to enforce separateness as a way of life by denying the majority of the people their basic human rights, the ANC took up the fight for our freedom. Chief Albert Luthuli, when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, characterised the inhumanity as such:
There can be no peace until the forces of oppression are overthrown. Our continent has been carved up by the great powers; alien governments have been forced upon the African people by military conquest and by economic domination; strivings for nationhood and national dignity have been beaten down by force; traditional economics and ancient customs have been disrupted, and human skills and energy have been harnessed for the advantage of our conquerors. In these times there has been no peace; there could be no brotherhood between men.
Look how far we have come.
Our progressive and widely lauded Constitution and Bill of Rights inspire hope and pride. But with every year that we celebrate our freedom, it seems ever more apparent that from some quarters we are urged to forget the past. Those who bemoan our remembering the past, forget that when we remember, we also acknowledge our past. Tracing the history of how we came to have the finest Constitution and Bill of Rights in the world cannot be separated from the significant role the ANC played in the creation of these documents. [Applause.]
Since the formation of the ANC, its central focus has always been the fight for equality and human rights for all. The vision of creating a better life for all began in May 1923, when the ANC conference in Bloemfontein adopted, inter alia, a resolution on a bill of rights. It called for equal treatment of all people, much like many of the constitutions of countries today in which an equality clause is included. It demanded access to land, equality before the law and participatory voting rights.
In 1943, in response to the Atlantic Charter, the Africans' Claims - Bill of Rights - was drawn up to reflect the post-war demands of the African people. The document, which was rejected by Jan Smuts, demanded, amongst other things, full citizenship rights for the African people. It also called for the abolition of political discrimination based on race; universal adult suffrage; equality before the law; freedom of residence; the right to education, freedom of trade and occupation; the provision of adequate medical and health facilities for all people; and the repeal of all discriminatory legislation. These demands found expression in the 1955 Freedom Charter of the ANC, which addressed fundamental human rights.
I am tracing these important and landmark documents, not only to remind us of, but also to highlight the fact that these documents and their contents influenced and shaped the country's own Bill of Rights and Constitution. During our multiparty negotiations it was the ANC that pioneered and campaigned for the Bill of Rights. This fact is contained in our historical documents and cannot be willed away, no matter how loud the calls for us to forget.
For the longest time the majority of the country's population were victims of crimes against humanity. We were a tortured, traumatised and violent country. Gross human rights violations were a daily occurrence and, when we emerged into the light of freedom, our therapy came in the form of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We debated whether to speak out or forget. Our collective morality ruled and we tried to heal by telling our stories. We tried to make over our souls, an "RDP of the soul" as it was called.
We have travelled a very painful and divided path. Celebrating the birth of a movement - which led the way for us to celebrate our humanity - should be an inclusive path. The protection of our fundamental and comprehensive human rights, as enshrined in the Constitution, cannot be taken for granted nor lull us into complacency. Building a caring society in which citizens respect the rule of law and one another, where the basic needs of our people are taken care of and necessary services delivered, is paramount. We are a diverse nation, and it is our strength. And by uniting in our diversity by celebrating our differences, we grow as a people.
We said then, as we do now, that such human rights violations will never be tolerated. Our laws and institutions today stand ready to protect and defend our humanity. The values, which underpinned the formation and development of the movement, must constantly serve as a reminder that only when these values are shared do we become formidable.
We take comfort from the state of the nation address, wherein the President set out his plan and vision for the coming year. He outlined the massive infrastructure programme, geographically focused programmes, projects focusing on health and basic education, information and communications technology and regional integration. All of these projects work to further our social and human rights in terms of addressing the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
And if we waver from our objectives for whatever reason, let us remember the words of one of our foremost leaders of the ANC, Nelson Mandela:
The justness of our cause had to be matched by the methods and morality of our organisation. And we can today in all humility claim that our liberation movement had throughout its existence sought to have its conduct informed by those enduring values of humanity. As in all human undertakings, there were failings, but it was the overall adherence to those informing values that ensured our liberation movement its place in history.
Hon President, Deputy President, Speaker and hon members, I would like to say...
... ?iki?a dira le molapo, mphago wa dira ke meetse. Phala t?a mona marula di a tloga. [Legoswi.][... there is a dire need to provide basic services for our people. I'll end here. [Applause.]]
Business suspended at 16:17 and resumed at 16:34.
Hon Speaker, hon President and Deputy President, hon members and members of the public, on Thursday, Mr President, you outlined an infrastructure plan that represents a bold, strategic and integrated platform to mobilise the state, private investors and the South African public behind a clearly articulated storyline of South Africa's opportunities. It is the first step towards creating a 10- to 20-year infrastructure project pipeline. Our job in government is to ensure focused, purposeful implementation.
Over the past four months, the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, PICC, identified what the key challenges are to effective implementation, and what we can do about them. We drew on the infrastructure driver of the New Growth Path, the detailed work of the National Planning Commission, the import of all three spheres of government, and the needs of the private sector and communities. We took account of the lessons of the 2010 world cup infrastructure and of the growing experience in the build programmes of the Gautrain, the Medupi and Kusile power stations, the Freeway Improvement Programme, and the major airport revamps.
We identified what worked well, such as the 2010 World Cup special law to fast-track regulatory issues, and what did not work well, such as cost overruns. Above all, the lessons are to have a clear project scope, with binding timeframes and clearly identified responsibilities - who does what, by when, with what resources - and to solve problems expeditiously when they occur. We know we can do it. But we temper that confidence by acknowledging that it will be hard work, that there are challenges and that we must honestly and frankly address them.
Hon members, we recognise and will address the skills challenge. We completed an audit of scarce skills in public institutions. The challenge is particularly in engineering, project management, finance and procurement, and in technical skills such as artisans, technologists and technicians.
To address this, we developed responses such as a shared pool for utilising scarce skills across and between public entities; rapidly increasing apprenticeships and practical training, as Eskom and Transnet are doing now; in the private sector using the National Skills Accord; a skills plan setting out the human resource requirements for every infrastructure project; attracting back South Africans with high-level engineering and project management skills who are working on projects elsewhere in the world; easing immigration rules in infrastructure-linked scarce skills categories; and developing partnerships with universities and other institutions in the build environment to produce the short- and long-term skills needs of the infrastructure programme. For example, Minister Nzimande and the Department of Higher Education and Training, DHET, are launching a new R160 million programme to increase engineering capacity at the University of Johannesburg. The two new universities planned as part of the PICC infrastructure roll-out will further accelerate capacity.
We see infrastructure, however, not only as a consumer or user of skills but also as a training space, and so we will set skills and apprenticeship targets in the project specifications.
We will address the project management and regulatory delay challenges. The infrastructure programme requires co-ordinated issuing of permits and licences, environmental impact assessments and resolution of land servitudes. It requires tight co-ordination between the three spheres of government and with public entities. We will therefore place legislation before Parliament during 2012 to address this in the form of an Infrastructure Development Bill.
In addition, we seek to improve co-operative governance. The PICC includes the premiers, the metro mayors, the SA Local Government Association, Salga, and a number of Cabinet Ministers led by the President and the Deputy President. It is therefore a forum able to take decisions to unblock delays across the three spheres. We are developing focused project management systems and clear performance dashboards to identify the state of progress with build programmes to enable the three spheres to intervene early and decisively.
We acknowledge and will address the funding challenges. We need to think smarter as we plan our infrastructure programmes. Simply throwing money at a challenge will not do. At the same time as we increase spending on infrastructure as a percentage of GDP, we must get more value for money. A number of the components of the infrastructure plan have funding committed through the national Budget or the balance sheet of state-owned enterprises. The infrastructure plan, however, requires reprioritisation across government with a clear shift of spending from consumption to investment, so that we lay the basis for our long-term prosperity - a matter taken up by Minister Gordhan in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, MTBPS.
The Industrial Development Corporation, IDC, and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, DBSA, working with the main state-owned enterprises and Minister Gigaba, will provide financial support within their mandate areas, creating a public-private partnership model to drive infrastructure development. The Presidential Infrastructure Summit will highlight opportunities open to the private sector. We will work with retirement funds on opportunities for long-term infrastructure investment that match their long-term pension liabilities to members. We will collaborate with international partners, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the Gulf Co-operation Council, GCC, countries to tap capital from sovereign wealth funds and private investors.
We acknowledge and will address the challenge of containing costs of the build programme and combating corruption. Our experience in past programmes showed high levels of collusion between contractors which drove up prices of supplies and services. We faced avoidable industrial action on some of the projects. We are therefore in discussion with the private sector and organised labour to conclude an integrity pact as part of a broader accord to address the need for competitive pricing, firm action against public and private sector corruption, and co-operative industrial relations. The competition authorities are ready to crack down on collusion and price fixing. Combating corruption will also ensure that the hard-earned monies that South Africans pay in taxes do, in fact, go to rebuilding infrastructure and supporting service delivery. And specific anticorruption measures will be identified and built into all processes.
We will ensure that the infrastructure plan spurs job creation, industrialisation and economic and social development. Jobs are our key economic goal, and infrastructure can contribute in a number of ways, such as using labour-based construction methods, creating permanent jobs in operating infrastructure, and maintaining existing and new infrastructure. Jobs are also created in the supply of components for infrastructure and, critically, jobs are created by this programme across the economy in mining, agriculture, manufacturing, the green economy, tourism and the creative sectors.
In this context, I am pleased to inform hon members that, working with Minister Oliphant, the Unemployment Insurance Fund, UIF, has committed R2 billion for a development bond issued by the IDC, which supplies funding at prime less 3% for projects with high employment absorption, bringing the total UIF commitments since 2010 to R4 billion. [Applause.] The IDC approved funding of R12,6 billion for the year as a whole, unlocking a total of R26 billion of local and foreign investment. Of the R10 billion IDC jobs programme announced in last year's state of the nation address, the projects approved to date will create 8 000 new jobs, mainly in manufacturing, agroprocessing, textiles, mining and the services sector. [Applause.]
At the start of last year, there were 13,13 million workers in South Africa. By the end of last year, there were 13,49 million workers in South Africa. However one interprets the statistics, the economy created 365 000 new jobs for the year, which is about 1 000 new jobs a day. [Applause.] A total of 179 000 jobs were created for the last three months of the year. However, our economy remains vulnerable to global economic performance and we need to increase domestic and regional demand, and infrastructure-led growth can assist to insulate us from global economic uncertainty.
We intend to include development targets in the project and tender specifications covering jobs, skills, industrialisation and local content and also small business development and greening the economy. With this infrastructure, we must get more than simply the outcomes of the build programme. Industry must invest to build a strong industrial presence in selected infrastructure supplies and use this as a platform to increase exports.
Mr President, yesterday morning the editor of the Cape Times welcomed the state of the nation address under the heading, "Local is lekker", but added that, and I quote -
The PICC has an even more important task to make sure that most, if not all, the tenders go to South African companies so that the billions of rand set aside do not leak out of the economy. Only then will the multiplier effect come into play, boosting jobs, consumption and investment and, thus, economic growth.
The selection of key projects must focus on rural development and strengthening the economic performance of the poorest provinces. As we roll out the revamped S'hamba Sonke road maintenance programmes in rural areas, we will look at ways to integrate them with nationally co-ordinated provision of water and sanitation, school-build programmes and health clinics. This will initially be done on a pilot basis in the 23 poorest rural districts.
By promoting development in the five economic nodes announced by the President in the state of the nation address, we intend to ensure that we do not rely only on growth in the two major metros. To support a dynamic small business sector and bring more South Africans into the economic mainstream, government will specify support for the small, medium and micro enterprise, SMME, role in infrastructure projects.
Mr President, you announced the new small business funding agency that will be set up this year that incorporates Khula, the SA Microfinance Apex Fund, Samaf, and the IDC's small business lending book. It will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the IDC with a distinct public identity. We plan to launch the agency in the first week of April 2012. Following an injection of funds from the IDC, as well as Treasury allocations, the entity will have over R2 billion available for lending over the next three years.
We will address the challenge to integrate what we do across government and with the private sector. President Zuma announced key strategic projects on Thursday - not a list of stand-alone activities, but a coherent integrated package. For example, the Limpopo infrastructure development project will be connected with urban planning to create the first postapartheid new city with potential for green technologies in housing, community facilities and workplaces. The Durban-Free State-Gauteng industrial and logistics corridor will not simply go through the Free State, but is planned to be a major stimulus for Free State industrial and agricultural development. The Umzimvubu Dam will be accompanied by the building of the N2 Wildcoast Highway to connect rural communities, to link farms to markets and to reduce transport times between East London and Durban by about two hours. The rail line from the Northern Cape is connected to a new private sector manganese sinter plant in the province, due to be completed by June this year.
Hon members, infrastructure can unlock Africa's consumer base of one billion people in terms of Africa's enormous reserves of oil, gas and minerals; the large pieces of agricultural land and major rivers; a climate that can drive solar energy; a very long coastline that can facilitate trade; and very high projected growth rates over the next decade.
Finally, we will address the need to build a common vision behind the infrastructure plan. Partnerships are at the centre of this programme. The President referred to four social accords concluded during 2011: on skills, basic education, local procurement and the green economy. They help with the successful implementation of the infrastructure plan. These are the real partnerships we need.
The hon Mazibuko calls for partnerships at the workplace on the one hand, but, on the other hand, lays out a programme that will simply invite us back to the age of industrial conflict and shop-floor tensions, diverting us from the real partnership-building that we need to do, a partnership around productivity, around skills, and around service delivery. [Applause.]
We have, therefore, commenced discussions with social partners on a broader accord that addresses both infrastructure and jobs, and hope to make progress during the first half of 2012. In short, we are seeking greater coherence, co-ordination and integration of our efforts, and the vision outlined in the state of the nation address provides the framework. Thank you. [Applause.]
Order! Hon members, the next speaker is the hon Steenhuisen, who will be making his maiden speech. You have the floor, sir. [Applause.]
Mr Speaker, on 9 February the President shared with us at great length what he feels is required to take us forward. There is much that is laudable about what was presented, but, sadly, the President did not deal with many of the systemic problems which are, in fact, holding us back as a country.
He paid little regard to the hundreds of local government municipalities and the number of provinces collapsing under the oppressive weight of cronyism and corruption. This must surely be one of the biggest challenges holding us back from achieving all we can as a nation. It is undoubtedly one of the most significant contributing factors to failed service delivery. And it has been proved time and time again that the effects of corruption hit the poorest in our country disproportionately harder.
The President also conveniently failed to mention the entire meltdown of governance in Limpopo. Unless the administration heeds the stark and obvious lessons from its almost total collapse under the burden of cronyism and corruption, the problem will only spread and place South Africa on the fast track to a failed state.
It is crony networks and circles of corruption which have ultimately brought Limpopo to its knees. No government business is concluded or decision made unless it feeds into a nefarious network of connected ANC comrades where mutually reinforcing relationships are forged by politicians and tenderpreneurs. [Interjections.]
Speaker, on a point of order: It is established convention ...
I haven't given you the floor yet.
Oh, sorry.