It is not only Parliament that should invite an entity; the department and the IEC should have known better, that this Parliament is new and that Budget Vote scrutiny is preceded by the entities' appearance before the committee. It is so disrespectful - the conscience of the IEC never informed it that it was a courtesy to be part of this historical landmark Budget Vote with the EFF.
The massive irregularities, with the complicity of the IEC staff and leadership, and coupled with deliberate inefficiency despite excessive resources, did not escape the eagle eye of the EFF.
It took just a few insane individuals in well-respected countries to slam their society into civil strife of untold magnitude over elections, but in South Africa this could not be the EFF. Nevertheless, the nonchalant attitude of the presiding officers and their assistants, and the outright collusion and manipulation of records are well documented and known.
If only South Africa could order a forensic audit of the elections, they would understand the magnitude of corruption and fraud perpetrated by IEC officials in these elections, and the victors would not be proud of their victory. We were there, we saw it, and we have the evidence.
Hence they could not come before the committee on the budget briefing. Yet they want the R1,6 billion appropriated to them to be approved!
The Department of Home Affairs officials do not take Parliament seriously, in that they refused to spend even a few minutes taking on board what the new Parliament had to say on the evolution and implications of the widely criticised immigration rules. Despite a passionate plea for them to assist so as to defend the department in the attacks against the promulgation of these regulations, the leadership of the department demonstrated outright arrogance. They flatly refused and went back to Pretoria in a hurry, pretending that the brief was so intense and complicated that it needed a whole day or a week to brief members, as if members are wilfully illiterate.
In every department that you have headed, hon Gigaba, the relationships you have had with the Gupta family, and the television and news print media ... [Interjections] ... leave much to be desired. The EFF will not support a Budget Vote that will benefit the Gupta family in advertisement revenues, a family that unashamedly violated the sacred land of war, the Air Force Base Waterkloof.
In these circumstances, the EFF vehemently rejects the Budget Vote of Home Affairs anchored in the National Development Plan's 2030 Vision, a neoliberal and white monopoly capital policy not different from Gear. [Time expired.] Thank you.