... as well as the introduction of the development price system to grow our manufacturing industry, are finding expression, and we will go a long way toward radically transforming our economy to create work and fight poverty. [Applause.]
Chairperson, others who have come before me to politically grandstand on this podium are at pains to retain the economic status quo of South Africa and Africa. They have become the machinery for the maintenance of the old economic order and relations. They have arrogated to themselves the custodianship of the narrow interest of white monopoly capital. [Interjections.] They have outsourced themselves into trusteeship of foreign capital and they are parading themselves as the guardians of the poor. [Interjections.] Indeed, it is true that a marriage made in heaven is the white man's burden.
Masiqhubeni. [Let us proceed.][Applause.]
One of the world's respected economists, Prof Ha-Joon Chang, warned us that all developed economies of this age began their journeys with industrialisation. They promoted their national industries through tariffs, subsidies and other measures. Those economies, like those of the United States of America and the United Kingdom, have today reached the top of the world's economic hierarchy through interventionist industrial policies, protectionism and beneficiation.
But today they are preaching to the developing economies that it is not good for the developing world to follow the same route if they want economic prosperity. What naked hypocrisy, lies and grandstanding! Their representatives in this country, through the DA, are preaching to us from the same Bible. [Interjections.]
The question remains, though: What is wrong if South Africa follows suit? Why are you kicking the ladder away? You climbed up the ladder to economic prosperity and now that you are at top of that ladder, you look back and see others climbing it the way you did to prosperity. Now you are kicking the ladder away. [Applause.] This is the route the DA and their cronies want South Africa to follow when they speak about the open opportunity society. [Interjections.]