Chairperson, hon President, Deputy President, hon members, political revolutions are about, among other things, the capture of state power and are used to advance the objectives of fundamental social transformation. This task must be carried out consciously and intentionally as its creation will not be an accident or what Uncle Jack Simons described as a natural, spontaneous growth arising from interaction between individuals each seeking their own interest.
Accordingly, developmental states are social constructs arising out of unique historical domestic and global contexts, as well as the struggles taking place in those given contexts.
All previous national democratic revolutions, especially in Africa, have been political revolutions. When national liberation movements hitherto achieved independence, they seldom destroyed the old state machinery. More often, they merely took over the structures, processes and systems of the old order, as well as their bureaucratic administration and went on working along the old lines.
It is for this reason that Uncle Jack Simons says that in Africa, hitherto, when national liberation was achieved, there has most often been continuity and not revolution.
Having drawn sufficient lessons from this African experience as well as our own 15 years of democracy, we have said that we have arrived at a moment of national renewal, which includes renewal at the level of the state itself as an instrument and site of transformation.
The state is a vital feature in the effort to bring about the revolutionary changes that we seek, to ensure that we succeed in the effort to construct a nonracial, nonsexist, democratic, united and prosperous South Africa that belongs to all who live in it.
The achievement of political freedom in South Africa coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, which was seen as the triumph of the neoliberal policies, also known as market fundamentalism.
Whilst this set us along a course of democratisation, it simultaneously also set limits to what we could do. What further compounded our efforts was the fact that, firstly, our political settlement was an outcome of a negotiated arrangement where the politically defeated forces still retained political influence as well as their economic power and dominance.
For significant democratisation and redistribution, they needed to co- operate. And secondly, the challenge in 1994 was not only that South Africa had been an apartheid, colonial society with severe poverty and inequality, and stagnation, but a further reality was that it was a developing nation with one of the most unequal societies in the world.
From the outset, South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy has been predicated on the rejection of the neoliberal perspective of the state and on a bias towards the poor. The state we are constructing in South Africa is one which places strong emphasis on the role of development and democracy.
In his book, How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, the Norwegian economist, Erik Reinert says:
History reveals how rich countries got rich by methods that by now had generally been outlawed by the conditionalities of the Washington Consensus.
The fact is that without a strong and activist state during their early years of development, colonising foreign countries and driving development in favour of the capitalist class, currently developed countries would not have reached their current levels of development.
Consequently, to argue for a small and inactive state today is an ideological construct aimed at entrenching the political and economic dominance of those already dominant.
Neo-liberals used the collapse of the Soviet Union to cajole the world into a tragic era of market fundamentalism; and they are now exploiting the current global recession to seek to revive this obviously failed and disastrous agenda.
Whilst not outrightly rejecting the role of the market, the new government has positioned the state such that it is able to drive economic growth and development. The debate in South Africa has not been about whether or not the state has any role to play, but has been about the content of such role.
This perspective has been greatly buttressed by the current global recession, which has placed greater emphasis on the need, inter alia, to regulate the market because on its own it deepens socioeconomic disparities and leads to the impoverishment of vast masses of the people who lose their jobs, livelihoods and dignity.
The developmental state is expected to lead the process of economic and political transformation. It is underpinned by the vision of reconstruction and development as an integrated process, consistent with the vision of the Freedom Charter and the RDP. Central to this vision is developing both the planning capacity of the state as well as monitoring and evaluation machinery.
Both these elements could better be pursued within the framework of co- operative governance and guided by the Constitution, whilst we bear in mind that South Africa is neither a unitary nor a federal state. Whilst the three spheres can be perceived as interlocking, each with a measure of autonomy to deal with matters assigned to it by the Constitution or relevant legislation, they nonetheless exist within the framework of a single, united state.
To emphasise autonomy whilst neglecting unity is dishonest. National planning does not take away the autonomy of provinces and the local sphere from them. On the contrary, it will enhance the pursuit of their own mandates by assisting them using a national instrument to set themselves clear objectives informed by a national perspective. And they will benefit from the accumulated knowledge, experience and know-how of other equivalent structures through emulation. It would assist to eliminate duplications and to exploit already existing knowledge and capacities.
National planning does not mean the same thing as the old notion of central planning, and hence it cannot be dismissed simply because others have a phobia for or nightmares about the period of central planning.
Of course, one of the most important lessons of the past 15 years has been that without a strict monitoring and evaluation mechanism, you cannot effectively measure progress achieved or identify and correct mistakes made.
Monitoring and evaluation is not so much about policing individual members of the executive or public servants; it is about ensuring that in strictly pursuing set targets, we can identify where mistakes are made or targets are not being met and thus can intervene accordingly. It is to ensure that we respect our public mandate as the state and spend the public funds wisely and in terms of the agreed programmes. Failure to implement our programmes as the state, and wisely to spend public funds amounts to total disrespect for the public.
These measures, collectively taken, assist to enhance the democratic developmental state and ensure that we shift the focus away from the size of the state to its role, capacity, objectives and programmes - to what it is doing fundamentally to transform the lives of our people.
In this regard, it is important that we support the Presidency in its efforts, as the President stated it in his address earlier, to improve its capacity to provide capable leadership to and oversight over government as a whole.
Contrary to what the opposition and some sections of the media have been saying, the current reorganisation of the government has more to do with renewal and improving the capacity of the democratic state than merely creating jobs.
Such a view disparages and makes vulgar what is a well thought-out and comprehensive vision, which the President earlier outlined with incisive eloquence and insight.
The argument about the size of the state is a tired argument and the issue the Presidency has raised today is about what role the state should play to ensure that we address the fundamental challenges of our society as a developing country.
The leadership role of the President cannot be reduced to chasing other people's soundbites and media statements. It is in how he provides a bold vision to the country and organises government to discharge its responsibilities effectively to fulfil its mandate and meet the genuine aspirations of the vast majority of our people.
Let the DA read newspaper editorials and formulate its policies based on these - anyway, they co-author these editorial opinions. Thank you.