Hon Chairperson, hon Minister of Human Settlements, first of all, let me take this opportunity to express the EFF's position, upfront: We are not in support of the Budget Vote. [Interjections.]
Since 1994, the ANC has made promises to build quality houses, but those promises have never been fulfilled. Instead, we have seen poor-quality houses being built and billions of rand wasted on repairing poorly built RDP houses. We surely cannot proudly say that this government has delivered proper houses to our people.
The apartheid matchbox houses were better than the poor-quality houses we see in the post-1994 build under the leadership of this government. [Interjections.] How many RDP houses have collapsed and how much was spent to phase in the 20 years of the so-called "good story" of housing service delivery by the ruling party?
We can't pretend that all is right. The state of housing in South Africa is not in good shape. Thus the EFF has a plan to address, with confidence, this incompetence of the ANC. An EFF-led government will provide quality, spacious houses to all people, in sustainable human settlements, with basic service delivery such as water, electricity, sanitation, schools and recreation facilities.
The ANC-led government, as it did in 1994, again promised South Africans that it would focus on the 7 million squatters and the homeless, as well as the upgrading of townships and hostels. Today we have more informal settlements than ever before. [Interjections.] The government has dismally failed to fulfil its promises of eradicating informal settlements by 2014. [Interjections.]