Chair, hon Minister, hon chair of the portfolio committee, hon members of the portfolio committee and ladies and gentlemen, in 1999 the United Nations declared that South Africa had the worst conditions of poverty for people with disabilities.
Now today my subject is disability, and from the word go I want to say that I support this budget, though it is way below our expectations and what we think the challenges are.
Immediately after the United Nations declared South Africa as having the worst conditions of poverty for people with disabilities, a desk for the disabled was established in the Office of the Presidency. We celebrated because we thought the desk had been elevated to the highest level and highest office of the nation and that, as a result, it would receive the attention it deserved.
Today it has been moved out of the Presidency and a Ministry has been established, and we are hoping that because it is now a Ministry, it will be afforded the necessary capacity and resources that it needs. I must say that we hope that this will be addressed in time because it is indeed way below our expectations.
Before I go further, I just want to quickly outline what we mean by disability. We mean physical disabilities - speech, sight, hearing - and we mean mental, emotional and intellectual disabilities. People must be aware that if they allow their emotions to run away with them, they could fall into these categories. [Laughter.]
The definition of disability is twofold: welfarist and philanthropic. "Welfarist" is when you receive grants from a state welfare system like ours; and philanthropic is when you receive donations from kind and compassionate members of society, including the private sector. That is fine because it does help the disabled, but it does make the disabled dependent. That is perpetual because the dependency syndrome is not resolved.
Today, in South Africa, there are some statistics, like those of the South African census, that say there are 2 million disabled people. Other calculations extend this figure to 4,5 million. Of the 2 million on state welfare or grants, about 1,3 million disabled people are recipients. So, you can see that there is a heavy dependence on the government.
The other definition says: Create the right environment for disabled people and they will be able to be productive and to contribute to society. In fact, some great people, like President Roosevelt of America, were disabled people. He sat in a wheelchair, and because people always saw the top half of his body, they were not even aware that he was disabled.
There are many others in history who contributed, not just to society, but to the history of the development of mankind. So, we encourage the second definition of creating the right environment. This is because the environment is designed to suit the needs of able-bodied people. And disabled people are saying, inasmuch as you have designed the environment, whether it is a work, school or sports environment - all kinds of environments - it is actually designed to suit the needs and interests of able-bodied people.
I must warn everybody because today you never know - from the lifestyles we lead, the car accidents we could have, the food we eat, the wars we fight and the crime we are exposed to - what fate will befall you. In fact, I then argue that disability is the potential fate of 45 million people because anybody could end up disabled, though I don't wish that. Anybody could end up being disabled if the finger of fate pointed in that direction. So, it's better if we prepare the environment for disability, because we'll be preparing a better world for all of us.
I want to quickly go to issues of employment, which are very important. What you see happening today with disability is that there's a lot of prejudice and stigma around it. The history that we come from is one in which some children were hidden in their backyards so that society wouldn't ever see that they were disabled.
Today, we say: just create the environment. Disability is a phenomenon that we must accept as a society, as the human race, and we must deal with it because it is there. And I've told you - it is increasing all over the world. Today the world has about 1,2 billion people with disabilities, and that number is increasing at a very fast rate because of the lifestyles we lead. I've said what I mean by that.
In places of employment the quota says that we must employ 2% disabled people nationally - in the public and private sectors. Even in the public sector the 2% has declined. Only 0,5% of people with disabilities are employed. This is because a lot of companies and even a lot of us in government are not willing to employ people with disabilities and give the necessary backup to people with disabilities to be enabled in their job situations.
When things are done for disabled people, you get the feeling that a big favour has been done for them. When you create the right environment for able-bodied people, they just say that they need office equipment and stationery for their offices. That's the normal thing: to buy stationery. These are the necessary devices and aids even for the disabled, inasmuch as you need stationery and office equipment to operate properly. Even disabled people need those devices and aids - stationery and office equipment - that are specially designed for their needs. So, all we are asking is for people with disabilities to operate properly at schools. Teachers must be properly trained to teach people with disabilities, because we want them to go into mainstream education and be in class and compete just like all other students are competing. I can tell you some of them would beat you in mathematics and science. [Laughter.] [Applause.] We want to say, finally, that the United Nations Convention has a treaty and South Africa today is a signatory to that treaty. The Minister did touch on this. The treaty is about enforcing human rights for people with disabilities all over the world, because they are not subhuman, though, at times, you get the sense that they are actually subhuman. They are fully- fledged human beings, and they have human rights and those human rights must be protected.
The treaty is about that, and we are a signatory to it. In South Africa there must be an Act on disability. This is still being prepared. The debate about the Act is whether the Act must be a stand-alone Act on disability or whether, because this is an issue that cuts across other Ministries, legislation should be effected in Health, Housing, Education, Labour and many other Ministries.
I'm just mentioning that. We're going to legislate on disability because we are signatories to the treaty on human rights for the disabled. Chair, I want to thank you for affording us the opportunity to present our case, and we support the Budget Vote. [Applause.]