Hon House Chairperson, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister Joe Phaahla, hon Minister Paul Mashatile, members of the NCOP, special delegates who are here, ladies and gentlemen, ...
... pele ke tsena ditabeng t?a ka t?a let?at?i, ke rata go gopot?a batho ba t?e ba di jelego mohla wola wa maloba. Di sa ba bipet?e le gonabjale. Go tloga ka 1994, mokgatlo wa DA ga o bone lesedi le ge e le ga nnyane. O rutha ka gare ga bodiba bja leswiswi leo ba le tlogelet?ego ke borakgolokhukhu ba bona kgalekgale. Ke bolela se ka lebaka la gore t?e botse t?e di dirwago ke mokgatlo wa ANC ga ba di bone. Di a bonagala dilo t?e, eup?a bona ga ba di bone.
Gona bjale mohlomphegi Mncube o bolet?e ka taba ye botse ya gore batho ba ga borena ba kua Khayelitsha ba palelwa ke go fihla Robben Island. Eup?a bona ba a e gana taba ye, gomme ga ba na mabaka a gore go reng ba e gana. Bona e sale ba t?ea mahumo a naga ye kgale gomme ba kgona go ya, eup?a set?haba sa ga borena sa Khayelitsha se palelwa ke go ya go rutha Robben Island. Re dira boipilet?o go Tona le Motlat?atona bja gore taba ye e diragale.
Ke tsena ditabeng t?a ka t?a let?at?i. (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.)
[... let me start by reminding these people about their past. They are still stuck in their past. Since 1994, members of the DA have never seen the light. They are still in the darkness that they inherited from their forefathers long ago. I am saying this because they do not see the good things that the ANC is doing. These things are visible but still they cannot see them.
Hon Mncube raised the point that the people from Khayelitsha cannot access Robben Island and they are against it without valid reasons. They are able to access Robben Island because they inherited the wealth of this country long ago. Our people in Khayelitsha cannot access Robben Island. We are appealing to the Minister and the Deputy Minister to make it possible for them to access Robben Island.
I am now switching to the issue of today.]
Hon Chairperson, the ANC rises to express its support for this Budget Vote. We do so because this Budget Vote remains an integral expression of our commitment to continue in our national path of building a united, nonracial and nonsexist South Africa. It expresses our resolve to break away from our tragic past where colonialism and apartheid neglected, distorted, and suppressed the cultural and linguistic rights of the majority of South Africans.
Allow me to take this opportunity to pay tribute to cultural icons such as the late Miriam Makeba - Mama Afrika - Thandi Swaartbooi, Sindiwe Magona, Nadine Gordimer, who was the first South African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, and many more who used arts and culture to express their discontent with the apartheid regime's discriminatory policies and legislation. These women joined the masses of our people in leading the fight against apartheid and they made a decisive choice to speak against the suppression and destruction of their freedom of expression, cultural identity and linguistic expression.
The apartheid regime used various discriminatory legislative, policy and systematic efforts to stifle the cultural identity of our people and the cultural creativity that they had inherited from past generations.
Apartheid ensured that the practice and promotion of languages, the performing arts, rituals, social practices and indigenous knowledge of the various groups in our country were discouraged and, in many instances, projected as inhuman, primitive and unacceptable. Ge re phasa badimo ba re re dira dilo t?e di se nago botho. [When we talk to our ancestors they say we are acting in an inhuman way.]
Our communities were denied resources and facilities to develop their own cultural expressions. It is this legacy that our society was confronted with after the demise of apartheid in 1994. It is this legacy that we undertook to destroy in its form, content and manifestation when we adopted the ANC's National Cultural Policy as part of the policy imperatives that we adopted at our first national policy conference after the unbanning of the ANC in 1992, and outlined our vision and policy imperatives when we adopted the document, Ready to Govern. I don't know whether hon Faber has used that document.
HON MEMBERS: No, it doesn't matter.