Sihlalo, malungu ahloniphekileyo, zindwendwe zethu, ndifuna ukuthi namhlanje, Mphathiswa, ndiyayincoma le bhulorho kwaye nomsebenzi ndiwubonile phaya. [Kwaqhwatywa.] Into entle intle. [Hon Chairperson, hon members, distinguished guests, hon Minister, I would like to say I commend this bridge, and I have also seen the job done there. [Applause.] Let us give credit where it is due.]
I am very fortunate today to have my son and daughter with me on the last occasion for me to speak in this Parliament. [Applause.] I would like to dedicate the first few minutes of my address to my honourable colleagues. Not long ago, I addressed this House on the occasion of my good friend and colleague Mark Ellis' farewell. I recall the occasion was marked with mixed emotions on both sides of the House. His presence here today is indeed an honour for me, and I have mixed emotions myself. [Applause.]
I stand here today on the occasion of my last speech in the National Assembly of South Africa, and I must confess that I am experiencing very similar emotions right now; not because of my length of service in this Parliament, but because today marks the end of a chapter in my political career. Hon members, though I have spent only short four years in this Parliament, allow me to share some observations, for whatever they are worth.
Having had the honour of being the Leader of the Opposition, and for being a shadow minister of a portfolio, I have learnt how enormous and important our parliamentary responsibility is to voters and to our nation. I have learnt that you can make a difference in opposition and in government through the legislative processes and by convincing opposing members to consider alternative ideas, only if you are fully familiar with the process and procedures that inform the formulation and passage of legislation.
We are all supposed to be leaders here and good leaders, or readers. If you don't read, research and compare, you will become irrelevant, and this will, in turn, undermine and erode the value of this Parliament. [Applause.] This Parliament can have any number of slogans and projects aimed at promoting the relevance of Parliament, but unless we as members honour our code of conduct, our constitutional responsibilities and our constituency obligations, we will never be an activist Parliament, nor will we be able to adequately defend our constitutional democracy.
Uhayi wam nguhayi, u-ewe wam ngu-ewe. [If I say no, I mean no; and if I say yes, I mean yes.]
We should say, "not in my name or in our name" when we are faced with unacceptable legislative proposals, patently choreographed investigation reports and a plethora of other frankly substandard practices and reports in our portfolio committees and other parliamentary committees. If we fail to do this we would all accept the collective verdict of guilty of not defending our constitutional democracy.
I am leaving Parliament the better for having made some impressive acquaintances, and very fortunately for me, having made some really good friendships on both sides of the House and behind me.
Ndiyabulela kuMbhexeshi oyiNtloko ondamkele kwindlu yakhe, wandenzela isidlo endinqwenelela nendlela entle. Undenzele imbeko engummangaliso. [Kwaqhwatywa.] [I thank the hon Chief Whip for welcoming me in his house and preparing a meal for me, as well as bidding me farewell. He has shown me amazing respect. [Applause.]]
Though I was honoured with the most generous farewell function on Wednesday evening by my caucus colleagues, where all the necessary thanks and goodbyes were said, it would be remiss of me not to thank them all publicly for their support during my time as Leader of the Opposition and for the sterling work that they continue to do in Parliament. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
I also want to share with this House the extraordinary story of hon Sunduza's appearance at our caucus farewell on Wednesday evening. She arrived uninvited and unannounced to give me a gift. The symbolic outreach had a profound impact on me and reaffirmed in my mind why we are here as Members of Parliament. [Applause.] We are here to do what we can and do what is necessary to improve the lives of the South African citizens ... sonke kunye. Ndiyabulela. [... together. Thank you.] [Applause.]]
My thanks also go to the chairperson of this portfolio committee, my portfolio colleagues and the portfolio committee support staff with their very generous words of farewell, and for the manner in which we conducted our important work.
Ndiyabulela kakhulu. [Thank you very much.]
However, the unfolding Green Paper process remains a concern to me. After last year's budget, where the committee demanded to have its first and only presentation to date on the Green Paper, this disdain for the committee by the department is frankly just not good enough, and the committee will not allow itself to be treated like mushrooms by the departmental staff. You know, you keep mushrooms in the dark and feed them manure. That will not happen to that committee.
In preparing for this debate, not only did I consider the annual performance plan, the proposed budget and every other report given to us, I read my speech from the last debate. This retrospection serves to reinforce my worst fear that this department is failing to meet its enormously important mandate.
This regrettable state of affairs could not have come at a worse time. This is the year that marks the centenary of the 1913 Natives Land Act, and one would have expected this most unfortunate and most regrettable milestone to have been recognised by ensuring an unprecedented and long overdue flurry of sustainable rural developmental initiatives, not the fluttering of flags and the erection of tents covered in slogans. The poor, hungry and landless people do not want to eat slogans. They cannot eat slogans.
The 23 identified district Comprehensive Rural Development Programme projects have flattered only to deceive. In this regard, I challenge the Minister to tell this House what happened to the department's appointed consultant who stole a million rand from a women's project in Muyexe? This was reported more than a year ago. I want the Minister to come back to the podium and tell us what happened to that person who stole that money. [Applause.]
The only way to appropriately commemorate and redress the abominable Natives Land Act and the other equally reprehensible Acts that systematically expropriated the land and the dignity of black, coloured and Indian South Africans is to ensure that the programmes of restitutions, redistribution, land and agrarian reforms result in the establishment of the successful and sustainable black commercial farmers and self sufficient small-scale black farmers.
To this end, the ANC-led government must also give private freehold titles to all people living in the former homeland areas and in Ingonyama Trust areas, for all the obvious reasons, and also because the National Development Plan, NDP, identifies insufficient tenure security for black farmers in communal areas as a major risk to agricultural expansion and the objective of building an inclusive rural economy.
Hon Sizani, you said that the ANC must acquire more land. There is a fundamental difference between the ANC and government. It is not the ANC's responsibility to acquire land. It is the government's responsibility to acquire land. [Applause.] In this regard, we must hold up a mirror to this department's raison d'tre and consider this image against the backdrop of the Minister's admission that 90% of this department's land reform programmes have failed. This failure has, ironically, also provided those who prey on the resources of the state easy access to a source of ready cash. The so-called recapitalisation programme, which was set up to resuscitate going commercial farms that this department has allowed to fall into unproductive disrepair has become a veritable cash cow for corrupt officials and their cohorts.
What is happening with the many farms acquired in Cradock and Somerset East? Firstly, the sugar beet project and now the biofuel project are cases in point. These properties have been allowed to become run down and unproductive in a very short space of time and will perforce have to be recapitalised at enormous and wasteful expenditure.
Minister, don't think that reaching your quantitative land reform targets will address the issue of rural poverty and landlessness. Firstly, you don't have a clue how much state land you have. You have a vague, but by no means credible, idea of how much private farm land there is and who owns it. This, despite the fact that you held up a pathetic bar graph illustration in this House claiming that the land audit is complete. In the Eastern Cape alone, there are 4 million hectares of either unsurveyed or surveyed and unregistered land. So, we do not have a land audit. We have no idea of how much land there is.
You also don't have the faintest idea of what the potential land value or land holding would be of those restitution beneficiaries who chose cash settlements in lieu of land distribution or land restitution. So, until you do know this, don't claim easy victories, and, more importantly, don't tell the people who are here any lies. [Applause.]
My advice to you and your Cabinet colleagues would be to concentrate on addressing the facts in rural development, land reform and agriculture. These are: The contribution of agriculture to the gross domestic product, GDP, has decreased from 9,1% in 1965 to less than 2% in 2012, and the number of commercial farmers has gone from 100 000 to 36 000 in 15 years. These are the people who feed the nation and employ hundreds of thousands of people, but they are disappearing. [Interjections.]
Hayi ndiza kufika nalapho. Ndivuya kakhulu ukuba uthetha loo nto; ndiza kufika kuyo loo nto. [I will also get there. I'm very happy to hear you talking about that; I will get to that.]
It is thus increasingly difficult for new entrants to succeed at farming as they have to face ever-increasing international competition, rising import costs, and especially electricity and wages.
Bendiye eKhangela kule nyanga iphelileyo apho kuqeshwa abantu baze bahlaliswe kwiicontainers. Aba bantu bahlawulwa ama-R85 ngosuku ngurhulumente. [I went to Khangela last month, where people are employed and made to stay in containers. The government is paying them R85 per day.]
New entrants need to receive appropriate support in order to cope with these difficulties. This is your responsibility and you are failing them dismally, and if you are honest, hon Minister, you will have to admit that you are not producing new competent commercial farmers or competent small- scale farmers through the land reform programme.
The other important facts about your department that constrain your ability to deliver are: successive qualified audits by the Auditor-General; financial irregularities in the department that have prompted the Special Investigating Unit, SIU, investigation; massive claims against the department resulting from negligence and slipshod legal proceedings; persistently high levels of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounting to R83,4 million in 2011-12 alone.
Your budget, which we will conditionally support in this historically important year of 2013, is simply not adequate to achieve your targets, regardless of what the market price is. So, Minister, get real, cut your cloth to what you can afford and use your budget more effectively, efficiently and economically, and stop looking for the proverbial scapegoats.
Jy weet, julle het daardie ou stories van julle heeltemal holrug gery. [You know, those old stories of yours have been told to death.]
Furthermore, you must understand that unless the reopening of the land claims process is funded by Treasury we cannot support the budget, because your current budget cannot cover the finalisation of the current land restitution programme.
Now for some home truths: Your departmental staff are the Achilles heel of your department. In this regard, let me quote what I said about them last year after being in the committee for five short months; my impression has, regrettably, been reinforced one year later. The following were my observations, and I quote myself:
In interaction with officials of this department over 13 years my experience to date has been one of frustration as a direct result of ineptitude, carelessness, lack of Batho Pele, lack of professionalism, lack of integrity and blatant dishonesty. As with everything in life, there are the exceptions, and for those that I have encountered I wish to say thank you. For the rest, Minister, I say shame on them.
They know who they are and, Minister, if you and your Deputy Minister attended our meetings more often you would know who they were too. However, I must commend the Chief Land Claims Commissioner. When I write to that man, he responds on the same day and within a week I have an answer. That is unique in that department.
I leave Parliament today knowing that I did what I could where I was and with what I had at my disposal. Regrettably, though, due to the shocking work ethic of your staff, I leave here with the queries I inherited from my predecessor and those that were generated in my time in this portfolio mostly unanswered. These queries were not dreamt up by me, they come from South African citizens, tax payers and voters. You and your officials ignore them at your peril.
Their failure compounds our precarious national food security status, and the brunt of the cost of imported basic food stuffs is felt most sorely by the poorest in our society. These are the people that the ANC have taken for granted for so long as being their voting fodder.
Abantu abahluphekileyo bayayazi indlala. [Poor people know the reality of hunger.] You don't have to tell poor people how difficult it is to be poor. Baza kunibonisa. Indelelo yenu iza kunibetha kabuhlungu ngowama-2014, yiva ndikuxelela. [They will show you. Your underestimation will cost you dearly in 2014, I am warning you.] [Interjections.]
Lastly, Minister, please explain to this House today when you come to this podium what the hon Minister Radebe meant by these words:
We look to our courts to develop jurisprudence to guide us regarding the interpretation and implementation of the provisions of the property clause in our Bill of Rights. It is for this reason that we have, through the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, proposed legislative amendments that will enable the Judicial Service Commission to recruit judges who possess appropriate skills and the required judicial philosophy to redress the devastating effects of land dispossession. I am pleased that my colleague in the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform is pursuing these amendments.
Minister, I asked you to explain those words because they were said in your name and because 2013 is the centenary commemoration of the 1913 Natives Land Act, and because they sound ominously like an assault on our constitutional provisions and on an independent judiciary.
Hon members, my grandfather was a member of this Parliament. He opposed the government that implemented those laws. I am a member of this Parliament, and I oppose your laws. [Interjections.] I oppose your laws because what is wrong is wrong and what is right is right.
I want to say, in conclusion, that it has been an honour serving with you, only when we were honest with each other. Only when we were honest with each other!
Ndiyabulela. [I thank you.] [Applause.]