I said nothing about the hon member's hair. All I said was that we know that the hon Koos van der Merwe's hair is his own and that his nonsense is his own. I further said that I was not sure about whether the ideas that were promoted on Sunday and Wednesday were hers or were of some drafting factional team who wrote them. [Interjections.] I might have spoken about a swollen head without any sense of sexism whatsoever, but I did not do that either.
As the ANC, Deputy Speaker, and as the ANC-led government, we agree that as South Africans, we have to work together to address the challenges of our country, and indeed, of our global crisis-ridden epoch. [Interjections.] Working together doesn't mean that differences, including ideological differences disappear, or that we should suppress our debates. On the contrary, that is the very meat of democratic politics. As we debate, we should also do so with an overarching sense of responsibility to our country, our region, to the world in which we live, including our increasingly fragile natural world. [Interjections.]
I don't think that many of the contributions in today's debate, particularly those from the DA, have remotely appreciated the challenges and responsibilities that we all confront. Too often, the DA reduces working together to the idea of the government working together only with the corporate, private sector - life as a perennial market-driven public- private partnership. This government is committed to working with the corporate private sector, for no other reason than that there is to be found there a vast amount of wealth and resources, which often is not currently invested in productive activity. [Interjections.]