Chairperson, hon members, bagaetsho, dumelang. [I greet you all.]
I would like to express my deepest condolences to Minister Chabane's family and the ANC for their loss. We mourn his passing and hope that his family will soon find peace during this trying time. Robala ka Kgotso. [Rest in peace.]
Today is not a pleasant day. Nobody wants South Africa to succeed as much as we do. Every member of this House wants our country to be a place of prosperity and hope for every citizen. We all want opportunities to be extended to those denied them in the past. And we all want a President we can believe in - somebody with the commitment and the vision to take us forward.
We had that in President Nelson Mandela. When Madiba was President, life was not perfect, but he gave us hope. He gave us the belief that we were moving in the right direction. He respected and upheld the Constitution, and placed the needs of the people before the needs of the party. He gave us a glimpse of what a nonracial and united South Africa would look like. He was a selfless leader who embodied the democratic dream.
But the light of that dream has since faded, as the ANC has become a party that places the needs of one man above those who elected them to power.
On the day of his inauguration in 2009, President Zuma made a commitment to South Africans to ``[serve] our nation with dignity, commitment, discipline, integrity, hard work and passion.''
Yet in the six years that President Zuma has presided over our country, the dream of President Nelson Mandela has been all but destroyed, and the integrity of the Office of the President decimated.
Madam Speaker, the vote before us today is not only one of no confidence; it is a vote of conscience. We cannot in good conscience allow the needs of millions of South Africans to be supplanted by the agenda of one man, while we look on in silence. For too long the members to my right have turned a blind eye to the destruction of our democracy being perpetrated by the President, and his project of state capture on the grandest scale.
It is on a day like this that I wish we were not constrained by the straight-jacket of our party system. Because I know that many of you on this side of the House will vote against your conscience today. [Interjections.] You will vote to keep a man in office who is doing everything possible to evade 783 counts of fraud, corruption, and racketeering. You will vote for a thief - a man who stole the people's money to build his R246 million home, while millions of South Africans go to bed hungry. [Interjections.]