Independent democrats Response to the State of the Nation Address by Patricia De Lille
2004-03-02. I want to start by doing something very uncharacteristic for an opposition party in this country. I want to thank you, President Mbeki for reminding us of the vision that President Mandela had for our nation back in 1994. I also want to acknowledge the role that all the liberation movements played in delivering the democracy that we enjoy in this House and our country. But this welcome reminder, President Mbeki, has only reinforced for me how far this government has strayed from this vision.
As we approach our third national elections as a free country, we need
to stop and ask ourselves whether we are happy with the way we have
moved forward as a nation. No doubt, the ANC will tend to highlight the
successes, and to be fair there have been many, while the opposition
parties will be quick to point out the failures. The Independent
Democrats believe, however, that the last ten years of our democracy
should not only be judged on the successes or failures of government,
but how we as a nation have collectively taken forward the vision we
all had for our country back in 1994.
The country we live in today is undoubtedly better than the one we emerged from in the dark and tragic days of apartheid. It would be an insult to all those who fought against such a regime though, to now use it as our benchmark for our success. We thankfully set higher standards for ourselves, which is represented in the most democratic document of our nation, the constitution. The mistake we fell into, however, was to think that producing such a document was the end point of the struggle. The Independent Democrats believe that this document must serve as our solid launch pad for the future.
The challenge for us is to breathe life into this document by ensuring that every South Africans constitutional rights are now realised. We have witnessed too many cases over the last ten years where government has not remained true to the letter or spirit of the constitution. In the much quoted Grootboom case, government was judged as violating the constitution by not delivering on South Africans socio-economic rights. There was also the TAC case in which governments refusal to give Nevirapine to HIV positive mothers was judged unconstitutional, not to mention completely unjust. There was also the Richtersveld case where the courts overturned the land rights commission by recognising the traditional rights of the community to their land. While I am extremely grateful for the power of the constitution and the constitutional court to hold government to account, I am also dismayed at governments constant disregard for the founding document of our new nation. It is a bitter irony, that the very people who helped draft the constitution are now violating it. I am extremely grateful for the independent judiciary because I have resorted to it three times to prevent the excesses of government and I won every time!
Comrade President, in your response to the Hefer Commission report you stated that I should be called before parliament and disciplined. I challenge you now today in this House to do exactly that because I question your understanding of the parliamentary processes of this country. I also hope that you will get better legal advisors.
Let us also consider the sorry State of our Politics. I believe that far from building bridges in our nation, our political parties have only continued to divide it. Opposition parties, in their quest for votes, will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. People are dying in Kwazulu Natal as a result of political parties jostling for their own selfish needs. I call on President Mbeki and Minister Buthelezi to lower the political temperature in Kwazulu Natal so that the bloodletting can be prevented. Our people deserve more maturity from their political parties. We need to move beyond this approach of simply opposing each others' ideas and actions because they are not from the same political party. The challenge for opposition parties is to tangibly show government how it can improve its performance as opposed to simply rejoicing every time they mess up. It is also unfair of some opposition parties to now attack government on its non-delivery when they have also had a chance to show the electorate what they could do in this province. The only thing they delivered to our people was debt, sex, scandals and division.
We have a Western Cape Premier who continues to lie to the province that he is putting education first. The Independent Democrats are aware that 107 mobile classrooms that were ordered by the Provincial Department of Education at an astronomical cost of R135 000 per classroom. If the department had simply bought them directly instead of going through the contractor Abacus they would have only cost R85 000. To date only 12 of those 107 mobile classrooms have been delivered by the Department of Public Works. To make matters worse this contractor is from Gauteng and even though he failed to deliver he has now been given a second contract by the Province. The contractor makes money off taxpayers while our children are being taught on sandy patches in Khayelitsha and children in Masipumele are enduring classrooms of 65 pupils. The schools affected by this are Masipumele in Noordhoek, Nomzana in Strand, Sedgefield in George and Heins Park in Mitchells Plain. This is a product of the unholy alliance between the NNP and the ANC in this province. We demand the resignation of both Tasneem Essop and Andre Gaum for their role in this mess.
Our nation is still divided and many South Africans feel excluded from enjoying the fruits of our democracy. Over forty percent of our population is excluded from the dignity of work. Of those, 70 percent have never worked in their lives before. The vast majority of those living in poverty do not receive any form of social assistance from the government. Government has also directly excluded the fishing communities along our coast from earning an honest livelihood through their inhumane policy. Many South Africans, particularly the youth, also feel excluded because of their language and culture and the constant guilt they are made to feel for the sins of apartheid. In contrast, The Independent Democrats has an inclusive vision and concrete policies to assist South Africans in becoming productive and fulfilled members of our society.
The Independent Democrats is happy that the government will be spending R100 million on infrastructure development. The economic policy of the ID is that this R100 million should be spent on eradicating the backlog of repairs and maintenance of our deteriorating hospitals, schools and roads. The policy of the Independent Democrats is to use the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises as the contractors in this work. In this way the SMME's can gain access to the capital that they so sorely need to grow their businesses into growing concerns and thus create more jobs. The Independent Democrats also believe that a consensus needs to be reached between labour, government, business and civil society on the appropriate role of the State in delivering development. NEDLAC has patently failed in this task and we have a situation where the responsibilities of each sector in creating jobs and growing the economy is not agreed upon.
HIV/AIDS is continuing to divide us, through our destructive stigmatisation of HIV positive people in South Africa. We do not have strong political leadership to personify the struggle against HIV/AIDS. I don't understand why our President refuses to take the lessons of other African leaders who were able to reduce their infection rates through directly leading the war against HIV/AIDS. Our political leaders need to follow in the footsteps of our new breed of heroes like Nkosi Johnson and Khabzela who were not afraid to speak out and act on HIV/AIDS. In contrast we have a government that is taking AIDS through a vegetable patch from garlic, a touch of olive oil and now beetroot. The African potato has been swallowed and ditched. When are we going to get out of this madness and face the issues. We urgently need trained staff and medicines. The medicines tender was supposed to go out in November after the Cabinet announcement and is now only going out this Friday. When will the Minister and President take the epidemic seriously and stop scratching around in the vegetable patch and visit the people in hospices and hospital and their bereaved families.
Crime in South Africa is also dividing our people and communities through the fear it generates. We need to speed up the transformation of our justice system. Government needs to empower communities to take control of their own human security. Far more courts need to be built and prosecutors need to be paid a decent wage so that more people can be attracted into the profession. Our police are not given the support or protection they require as evidenced by the huge numbers of police killings in South Africa. The corruption and overcrowding in our jails have meant that they cannot play an effective rehabilitation role and merely act as universities of crime.
We still live in one of the most unequal societies in the world and this inequality is only getting worse. I also wish to correct the government when it says that we have a first and a second economy in South Africa. We do not. We only have one economy that is divided into a formal and informal sector. The informal sector is also contributing to the health of the formal economy through the goods and services it buys from it. The policy of the Independent Democrats is to support the informal sector as it is being forced to absorb the millions of retrenched and unemployed people in our country. Our challenge is to bridge this divide in our economy so that every South African can play a productive role.
When ID launched its Access to Education Initiative a few weeks ago, we were flooded with calls from concerned South Africans who wanted to donate money to sponsor childrens school fees. It is clear that the people of South Africa are desperate to break down the divisions of the past and help contribute to building a successful future. Unfortunately not enough political leaders are showing them how! ID will continue to play its role as a bridge between those South Africans who need assistance and those who are able and wanting to help.
Opposition parties have an important role to play in our democracy but I believe that they have completely failed in their responsibilities. The Independent Democrats are not trying to fragment the opposition vote in South Africa, we are growing it by showing our people the powerful role that constructive opposition can and should play in nation building. And no Kortbroek, that does not mean allowing yourself to be co-opted by the ruling party for the sake of short-term political gain! Die NNP is net die snor van die ANC. Hulle het die verkiesers veraai om die houvrou van die ANC te word.
The Independent Democrats offer an inclusive and positive vision for our country. Our party is building bridges across communities, from the very rich to the very poor and across all the traditional social group divides. We have been joined by so many South Africans over the last nine months, as our people are tired of politics as usual and the petty conflicts that go with it. A young South African recently said “if you have a 100 small voices, suddenly you have a roar!†We have tens of thousands of voices in ID, and all I can say is, hear us roar!
The country we live in today is undoubtedly better than the one we emerged from in the dark and tragic days of apartheid. It would be an insult to all those who fought against such a regime though, to now use it as our benchmark for our success. We thankfully set higher standards for ourselves, which is represented in the most democratic document of our nation, the constitution. The mistake we fell into, however, was to think that producing such a document was the end point of the struggle. The Independent Democrats believe that this document must serve as our solid launch pad for the future.
The challenge for us is to breathe life into this document by ensuring that every South Africans constitutional rights are now realised. We have witnessed too many cases over the last ten years where government has not remained true to the letter or spirit of the constitution. In the much quoted Grootboom case, government was judged as violating the constitution by not delivering on South Africans socio-economic rights. There was also the TAC case in which governments refusal to give Nevirapine to HIV positive mothers was judged unconstitutional, not to mention completely unjust. There was also the Richtersveld case where the courts overturned the land rights commission by recognising the traditional rights of the community to their land. While I am extremely grateful for the power of the constitution and the constitutional court to hold government to account, I am also dismayed at governments constant disregard for the founding document of our new nation. It is a bitter irony, that the very people who helped draft the constitution are now violating it. I am extremely grateful for the independent judiciary because I have resorted to it three times to prevent the excesses of government and I won every time!
Comrade President, in your response to the Hefer Commission report you stated that I should be called before parliament and disciplined. I challenge you now today in this House to do exactly that because I question your understanding of the parliamentary processes of this country. I also hope that you will get better legal advisors.
Let us also consider the sorry State of our Politics. I believe that far from building bridges in our nation, our political parties have only continued to divide it. Opposition parties, in their quest for votes, will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. People are dying in Kwazulu Natal as a result of political parties jostling for their own selfish needs. I call on President Mbeki and Minister Buthelezi to lower the political temperature in Kwazulu Natal so that the bloodletting can be prevented. Our people deserve more maturity from their political parties. We need to move beyond this approach of simply opposing each others' ideas and actions because they are not from the same political party. The challenge for opposition parties is to tangibly show government how it can improve its performance as opposed to simply rejoicing every time they mess up. It is also unfair of some opposition parties to now attack government on its non-delivery when they have also had a chance to show the electorate what they could do in this province. The only thing they delivered to our people was debt, sex, scandals and division.
We have a Western Cape Premier who continues to lie to the province that he is putting education first. The Independent Democrats are aware that 107 mobile classrooms that were ordered by the Provincial Department of Education at an astronomical cost of R135 000 per classroom. If the department had simply bought them directly instead of going through the contractor Abacus they would have only cost R85 000. To date only 12 of those 107 mobile classrooms have been delivered by the Department of Public Works. To make matters worse this contractor is from Gauteng and even though he failed to deliver he has now been given a second contract by the Province. The contractor makes money off taxpayers while our children are being taught on sandy patches in Khayelitsha and children in Masipumele are enduring classrooms of 65 pupils. The schools affected by this are Masipumele in Noordhoek, Nomzana in Strand, Sedgefield in George and Heins Park in Mitchells Plain. This is a product of the unholy alliance between the NNP and the ANC in this province. We demand the resignation of both Tasneem Essop and Andre Gaum for their role in this mess.
Our nation is still divided and many South Africans feel excluded from enjoying the fruits of our democracy. Over forty percent of our population is excluded from the dignity of work. Of those, 70 percent have never worked in their lives before. The vast majority of those living in poverty do not receive any form of social assistance from the government. Government has also directly excluded the fishing communities along our coast from earning an honest livelihood through their inhumane policy. Many South Africans, particularly the youth, also feel excluded because of their language and culture and the constant guilt they are made to feel for the sins of apartheid. In contrast, The Independent Democrats has an inclusive vision and concrete policies to assist South Africans in becoming productive and fulfilled members of our society.
The Independent Democrats is happy that the government will be spending R100 million on infrastructure development. The economic policy of the ID is that this R100 million should be spent on eradicating the backlog of repairs and maintenance of our deteriorating hospitals, schools and roads. The policy of the Independent Democrats is to use the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises as the contractors in this work. In this way the SMME's can gain access to the capital that they so sorely need to grow their businesses into growing concerns and thus create more jobs. The Independent Democrats also believe that a consensus needs to be reached between labour, government, business and civil society on the appropriate role of the State in delivering development. NEDLAC has patently failed in this task and we have a situation where the responsibilities of each sector in creating jobs and growing the economy is not agreed upon.
HIV/AIDS is continuing to divide us, through our destructive stigmatisation of HIV positive people in South Africa. We do not have strong political leadership to personify the struggle against HIV/AIDS. I don't understand why our President refuses to take the lessons of other African leaders who were able to reduce their infection rates through directly leading the war against HIV/AIDS. Our political leaders need to follow in the footsteps of our new breed of heroes like Nkosi Johnson and Khabzela who were not afraid to speak out and act on HIV/AIDS. In contrast we have a government that is taking AIDS through a vegetable patch from garlic, a touch of olive oil and now beetroot. The African potato has been swallowed and ditched. When are we going to get out of this madness and face the issues. We urgently need trained staff and medicines. The medicines tender was supposed to go out in November after the Cabinet announcement and is now only going out this Friday. When will the Minister and President take the epidemic seriously and stop scratching around in the vegetable patch and visit the people in hospices and hospital and their bereaved families.
Crime in South Africa is also dividing our people and communities through the fear it generates. We need to speed up the transformation of our justice system. Government needs to empower communities to take control of their own human security. Far more courts need to be built and prosecutors need to be paid a decent wage so that more people can be attracted into the profession. Our police are not given the support or protection they require as evidenced by the huge numbers of police killings in South Africa. The corruption and overcrowding in our jails have meant that they cannot play an effective rehabilitation role and merely act as universities of crime.
We still live in one of the most unequal societies in the world and this inequality is only getting worse. I also wish to correct the government when it says that we have a first and a second economy in South Africa. We do not. We only have one economy that is divided into a formal and informal sector. The informal sector is also contributing to the health of the formal economy through the goods and services it buys from it. The policy of the Independent Democrats is to support the informal sector as it is being forced to absorb the millions of retrenched and unemployed people in our country. Our challenge is to bridge this divide in our economy so that every South African can play a productive role.
When ID launched its Access to Education Initiative a few weeks ago, we were flooded with calls from concerned South Africans who wanted to donate money to sponsor childrens school fees. It is clear that the people of South Africa are desperate to break down the divisions of the past and help contribute to building a successful future. Unfortunately not enough political leaders are showing them how! ID will continue to play its role as a bridge between those South Africans who need assistance and those who are able and wanting to help.
Opposition parties have an important role to play in our democracy but I believe that they have completely failed in their responsibilities. The Independent Democrats are not trying to fragment the opposition vote in South Africa, we are growing it by showing our people the powerful role that constructive opposition can and should play in nation building. And no Kortbroek, that does not mean allowing yourself to be co-opted by the ruling party for the sake of short-term political gain! Die NNP is net die snor van die ANC. Hulle het die verkiesers veraai om die houvrou van die ANC te word.
The Independent Democrats offer an inclusive and positive vision for our country. Our party is building bridges across communities, from the very rich to the very poor and across all the traditional social group divides. We have been joined by so many South Africans over the last nine months, as our people are tired of politics as usual and the petty conflicts that go with it. A young South African recently said “if you have a 100 small voices, suddenly you have a roar!†We have tens of thousands of voices in ID, and all I can say is, hear us roar!
