Chairperson, Minister, hon Ministers, Deputy Ministers, comrades and hon members, constitutional principles I and VIII of schedule 5 of the 1993 interim Constitution state:
The Constitution of South Africa shall provide for the establishment of one sovereign state, a common South African citizenship and democratic system of government committed to achieving equality between men and women and people of all races. ... There shall be representative government embracing multiparty democracy, regular elections, universal adult suffrage, a common voters' roll and, in general, proportional representation.
In 1955, when the one and only Congress of the People, led by the ANC, defiantly ... [Applause.] ... declared against all odds and said, I quote ... [Laughter.]:
We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people ... that only a democratic state, based on the will of the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief.
As we near the centenary of the ANC, the organisation launched to unite our people and deliver services to all, irrespective of race, class or gender, departments of this democratic state should ask themselves what gift they are going to give the ANC on 8 January 2012. Home Affairs, in particular, needs to ask itself whether it will be able to give the gift of faultless and unblemished secure integrity of identity and status of citizenship.
Home Affairs will, on 8 January 2012, stand tall and without fear of contradiction declare, inter alia: All South Africans, 16 years and above, possess birth registration certificates; economic migrants have been separated from genuine asylum seekers; fraud and corruption have been curtailed; the National Population Register has integrity; our stewardship is beyond reproach; and our books bear testimony to this.
Today, our loyalty to the truth constrains us to celebrate the achievements of our government through the Department of Home Affairs. The department has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that its heart lies with the people. This department has refused to be an ivory tower which our people have to strive to reach, but has been the epitome of a caring developmental state that knows where people are.
At the foothills of the launch of the National Population Register on 23 March 2010 in Libode, the department achieved, inter alia, the following: There are health facilities connected for online registration in some health care facilities. We continue to campaign for babies to be registered within 30 days. An amount of 253 out of a total of 282 local government structures have established stakeholder forums. And, finally, provincial stakeholder forums were launched in the Eastern Cape, the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.
Regarding immigration services, the following achievements were registered. A total of 2,3 million travellers entered the Republic during the 2010 Fifa World Cup. About 12 000 skills-related work permits were issued to foreigners. And, regarding the Zimbabwean documentation project, of the 275 760 applications received, over 70 000 have, to date, been finalised.
The South Africa state is one with several departments meant to facilitate services to the people. Departments should therefore co-operate in order to accelerate and expedite services. In this regard, the Department of Home Affairs has to strengthen its co-operation especially with other departments, such as Health. By law, every child who is born alive should be registered with the Director-General of the Department of Home Affairs and the same applies to every certified death.
Because women mostly give birth to children in health care centres, and deaths are certified by medical personnel, it is vital for the reliability of the National Population Register that the department co-operates with the Department of Health in the provision of birth and death statistics. In the main, this co-operation is a guarantor of birth registration within 30 days of birth as the only entry in the National Population Register.
Secondly, in terms of the Department of Basic Education, any person aged 16 years and above is eligible to be issued with an identity document, and most 16-year-olds are school-going children. Co-operation between the Department of Home Affairs and the Department of Basic Education should be strengthened to facilitate the security and integrity of the identity of South Africans from as early an age as is legally permissible.
In his 2011 state of the nation address, his Excellency President Jacob Zuma said, and I quote:
We are concerned that unemployment and poverty persist despite the economic growth experienced in the past 10 years. To address these concerns, we have declared 2011 a year of job creation through meaningful economic transformation and inclusive growth.
It is therefore incumbent upon each department of government to realise the foregoing imperative.
While we do appreciate that 417 posts were identified and funded in the 2010-11 financial year, we are, however, concerned that 163 of them remain vacant. We are also concerned that in the financial year 2009-10 the department had acting positions beyond the legal limit of 12 months, and consequently disclosed R5,8 million expenditure as irregular. We urge expeditious attention to the aforementioned foibles that threaten to blemish the otherwise good image of the department. We certainly are not in doubt about the department's commitment to realising the creation of decent jobs and sustainable livelihoods.
The financial stewardship of the department needs jacking up, as the audit opinion suggested. The decrease in the budget from R5,8 billion to R5,5 billion this financial year is cause for concern in relation to the capacity of the department to meet its obligations.
According to the African Charter on Human Rights,
Every individual shall have the right to leave any country including his own ... This right may only be subject to restrictions, provided for by law for the protection of national security, law and order, public health or morality.
It should therefore follow that any legal limitation on people's movements should serve national interests and enhance national security.
The asylumseeker process poses a serious challenge to our national security and to the integrity of the immigration system. As a country we are committed to playing our part as host to those who have well-founded reasons to fear for their lives and who require refuge, as defined in various international instruments. In the same vein, we are determined to obviate any abuse, overt or covert, of the system and to strengthen the asylumseeker process.
In underscoring its declaration of 2010 as the year of working together to speed up effective service to the people, the 8 January Statement of the national executive committee of the ANC contends that:
Corruption poses a serious threat to our struggle to build a caring society and it erodes the moral fabric of our society. It is a threat that must be fought both inside and outside the state. The ANC will never tolerate corruption. Resolutely punishing and efficiently preventing corruption is therefore a major political task the ANC must attend to and at all times. All ANC members must be aware that combating corruption is a battle that can never be won.
[Interjections.]
This statement concludes this matter by categorically stating that:
The ANC is committed to transforming the state in a manner that benefits our people. There is no room for using the resources of the state for self-enrichment and acting from narrow self-interest. Selfishness is alien to the values of our movement.
We are encouraged by the department's commitment to combating fraud and corruption, as evidenced in its plan to effect, among other things, proactive performance of a detailed data analysis to identify and investigate corrupt activities; increased vetting capacity through an agreement with the State Security Agency to help with vetting investigations and possible evaluation and analysis; and close co-operation with law enforcement, state security and other pertinent agencies to ensure successful prosecution of corrupt officials.
Let the timeless words of our icon Tata Nelson Mandela ever be the lodestar before us, as we traverse the road to a national democratic society where neither race, nor gender, nor class shall stand as descriptors and prescripts of peoples' potential to access services and to attain development, and I quote:
... we are at last maturing to become a normal society, founded on mutual trust, bonded by mutual aspirations, and shaped by the reality of our existence rather than the fulmination of warped imagination. In our racial, language, religious and sectoral diversity, as the weak and the mighty, we are one people with one destiny.
Ka la 18 Motsheanong 2011 re ya dikgethong tsa bomasepala. IEC, e leng Komishene e Ikemetseng ya Dikgetho, e dutse e le malala-a-laotswe bakeng sa dikgetho tsena. Tsohle di motjheng. Re na le tshepo hore jwalo ka dikgetho tse ding tse fetileng, le tsena e tla ba dikgetho tse tla fetang ka kgotso, ntle le ditsitsipano kapa dikgohlano.
Re ntse re kgothalletsa Maafrikaborwa a matle hape hore ha e be boikgethelo ba rona kapa boitelo ba rona hore re thusane le Lefapha la Selehae kapa FPB, e leng Boto ya Difilimi le Dikgatiso bakeng sa ho lwantsha botlokotsebe bo hlahang diselefounung kapa dikomporong bakeng sa bana ba banyane ba fihlellang ditshwantsho tsa motabo ho na le hore ba fihlelle dintho tse ba tshwanetseng tsa sekolo. Ke boitseko ba rona re le batswadi hore re thusane le mmuso ho lwantshana le botlokotsebe bo jwalo. Modulasetulo, re le mokgatlo wa ANC re tshehetsa tekanyetso ena. Ke a leboha. [Mahofi.] (Translation of Sesotho paragraphs follows.)
[On 18 May 2011 we will be going for the municipal elections. The Independent Electoral Committee, IEC, is ready for this election. Everything is on track. We hope that just as with the previous elections, these will also be conducted peacefully, without any tensions or conflict.
We encourage South Africans that it should be our choice or commitment to help the Department of Home Affairs or the Film and Publication Board, FPB, in fighting against crimes committed through cellular phones or computers in relation to children accessing pornographic images instead of accessing relevant educational material. It is our right as parents to work together with government to fight against such crimes. Chairperson, as the ANC we support this Budget. I thank you. [Applause.]]