Today Thandi is excluded from Rhodes University for protesting against rape culture. Thandi is financially excluded from completing her qualification because your National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS, did not pay for her last year of study. Thandi was turned back from a clinic because of a shortage of contraceptives. Thandi then fell pregnant and was again turned back from hospital because the waiting list for abortion services can stretch to over five months.
Thandi is now the one in four women who'll live in absolute poverty for the rest of her life for having kept a baby she did not want and couldn't prevent carrying because of your government, Mr President.
Thandi is one of the 1 200 young women who got infected with HIV today despite numerous global efforts available to prevent this from happening and your failure to have it accessible for Thandi in Taung.
Thandi was protesting outside Parliament a few days before your address Mr President, wanting health rights for her fellow domestic workers.
Thandi is on nyaope and she will commit suicide before the new dawn because of depression. Thandi is also landless. Thandi is a rape victim living with her rapist in the same house because your police officers lost the docket.
Mr President, Thandi is unemployed and will remain unemployed for the next decade because you cannot cater for her needs in your job creation plan that rules out 80% of unemployed young people for the next decade.
All these social ills and failures of your government reproduce the kind of violence our country is associated with today and you have not the slightest idea how to resolve this. Let us therefore once again tell you what you should consider.
The state must ensure 50% women representation in all spheres representing economic benefits, political participation,
managerial and leadership responsibility. The state must introduce compulsory gender education and training for all, from school level up to the highest level of all public services. The state must introduce compulsory education on gender justice to police and establish specialised law enforcement units to deal with women related crimes.
The time for meaningless frameworks and commissions on the gender question has long expired, Mr President. Introduce a special inspectorate in the Department of Labour to monitor, report and enforce gender parity and equality in the workplace. Don't just talk about the decriminalisation of sex work if you do not mean it. Stop unfair discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex, LGBTQI, individuals when they want to adopt children in need. Decommodify basic needs such as education and health so that they are driven by need and not the maximisation of profits.
Your focus on health should be on primary health with a commitment to the attainment of universal health care coverage, quality clinics with strong immunisation and vaccination
programmes, prevention, promotion and education-orientated health care, protection and promotion of informal traders and allowing them to trade in the streets of Braamfontein, Sandton, Hatfield in Pretoria, Sea Point in Cape Town and at taxi ranks where women vendors get threatened with rape every day.
Lastly Mr President, if you are unable to do all of these things, move over and allow Thandi and other fellow young people to wake South Africa up from this nightmare you have collectively subjected us to for the past 25 years. [Applause.]