Chair, the address by President Ramaphosa mirrors the ANC's incapacity to plan, forecast and make projections to devise solutions to our challenges, for instance, the word "we will" appears no lesser than 35 times in the President' speech. Shockingly, the word "achieved" appears only six times. This means the ANC is perennially planning, while the country is on autopilot mode.
The President promised to create two million jobs in ten years, yet spoke nothing about his concrete solutions to achieve that.
In his words, "consistently reaching high rates of growth," the President quoted Ben Okri quite extensively. Ben Okri has also written that and I quote: "The challenge of our times has always been the challenge of leadership." While Ben Okri sustains the President's vision of dreams; he also asserts that the reality of freedom demands more consistency, vision and courage.
The cities of Johannesburg, Tshwane, Cape Town and Ethekwini are not only running out of space, but they are also not tech-savvy and responsive to the demands of our people. The ANC administration dreams about building a world class city, but can barely manage a power station, a train station or oversee a successful social welfare programme, SASSA.
While our people are migrating to the cities, we cannot ignore the cycles of grinding poverty and despair still gripping their livelihoods. Whereas we are a people of resilience, determination and optimism, these positive traits will remain
meaningless unless they are underpinned by realistic targets by government.
Of the seven priorities that the President pronounced last week, none implicated rural development and integration, that aspects of which appears in his February address, where he said the following and I quote: The focus we have placed on revamping industrial parks in townships and rural areas has brought about discernible ...
Give me more minutes. [Time Expired.]