14 February 2007

Madame Speaker,

Mr. President,

Deputy President,

Honorable Ministers and Deputy Ministers,

Honorable members,

The thirteen years of democracy have wrought impressive changes on the South African landscape.

These thirteen years have meant for the first time in over a century South Africa has enjoyed relative internal peace. This last decade is the first, in more than a hundred years, during which there was no major political upheaval!

These thirteen years have meant more than a decade of steady economic growth! Not sufficient, to be sure, to eradicate the poverty, the joblessness and deprivation that degrades too many of our people. But, steady growth nonetheless.

These thirteen years have witnessed the steady improvement of the living standards of the majority of South Africans, especially the poor and the most vulnerable. Research indicates that between 1998 and 2004, more than two million people moved up the social ladder. Whereas in 1998 the poorest categories represented 48% of the population, that had come down to 42% in 2004

During these past thirteen years we have seen an expanding floor of rights and entitlements unfold for the historically disadvantaged.

South Africa ’s fiscal deficit, which stood at 40% of GDP in 1996, has now been reduced to 1.5% of GDP.

In 2004 South Africa celebrated the electrification of 7.5 million households, that is, four million new electricity connections since 1994. By 2005 access to electricity stood at 71% of all households.

These are impressive achievements and to pretend otherwise is to bury ones head in the sand.

Madam Speaker,

While we must acknowledge and celebrate what we have achieved, yet we are introspective enough to recognize how much still needs to be done.

We on this side of the house assert and recognise that it is of no comfort to a citizen who has lost a loved one to crime to know that the rate of murder in South Africa has dropped dramatically since 1994.

It is of no comfort to the citizen whose home is violated by criminals to know that the statistics indicate a steady decline in this type of crime.

It is not very helpful to the victim of pickpockets, muggers, thieves and other robbers to hear that we now have new modern methods of detection that can lead to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators.

But, it is equally unhelpful to use crime as a political football!

The challenge before all of us is how to take the war to the criminals. To sneer at the measures the government has put in place to do precisely that, is to be churlish and petty.

Madam Speaker,

This government, elected with an overwhelming mandate in 2004, has reached its mid-term. That mandate included the acceleration of the growth and the more equitable economic development of our country and its people; as well as the promotion of social cohesion and the nurturing of a shared national identity.

The issue of national identity has assumed a special significance in our country because of our very fractured and conflict -ridden past. Who we aspire to be as a country and society was summed up in the Constitution we collectively adopted in December 1996.

The admirable principles contained in that document represent a commitment by all of us to strive for greater mutual understanding and acceptance, not despite our differences, but rather by embracing the diversity of the South African people as one of our great strengths.

I am consequently want to underscore the President’s call for pluralism and inclusivity, not as a grudging recognition of difference, but as the positive affirmation thereof as both healthy and edifying.

It is that understanding of the spirit of our Constitution that persuades me to take issue with the Honourable Rev. Meshoe for his misguided homophobic attitudes, which he once again voiced in this house yesterday. The suggestion that there are some South Africans who should enjoy fewer rights than others by virtue of their sexual orientation, clearly runs counter to the letter and spirit of our Constitution.

Equally reprehensible is the idea that the rituals observed by some of our people can lightly be castigated as “savage”, “barbaric” and “uncivilized”. Each individual South African’s personal preference regarding these matters is not at issue. Whether I approve or not, these are Constitutionally protected rights which we are all obliged to respect and defend.

2007 marks a number of important anniversaries in both the continental and South African calendars. 50 years ago, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to reclaim her independence. Under the leadership of Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party, Ghana took her place among the family of free nations, helping to accelerate the pace at which the people of Africa undid the outcome of the 1884 Berlin Conference when our continent was shared out among rapacious colonial powers.

South Africa will join the other countries of Africa in marking this significant milestone.

The 50 years of progress since Ghana’s independence have not been without serious reverses and tragedies. Under the leadership of the ANC, South Africa has made a sterling contribution towards healing the wounds of our continent. This year, for the first time in more than 45 years, the people of Congo have been able to hold free and fair elections.

The South African National Defence Force, created by our democratic government after 1994, has become one of the greatest factors for peace and stability in the continent. The men and women of the SA National Defence Force, wherever they have been deployed, have done us proud. Democratic South Africa’s role on the African continent is not premised on flexing of our economic and military muscle to bully and browbeat others to do our bidding. Patient, quiet and often unseen persuasion and discussion is how South Africa goes about its diplomacy and how it attains results.

Those who imagine that shouting and extravagant gestures can change anyone’s mind would do well to examine the interesting diplomatic breakthroughs of recent days and contrast those with the impasse some very powerful countries are locked into at present.

Here at home we will also have occasion to note and commemorate our own national figures associated with South Africa’s own struggle for freedom.

In 1947 the presidents of the African National Congress, the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress concluded an agreement, later dubbed the Three Doctors Pact, in terms of which their three organizations agreed to take united action on issues of common concern.

That pact laid the basis for what was to grow into a powerful mass movement during the 1950s, the Congress Alliance, which still serves as the lodestar for the Tri-partite Alliance of today.

Chief Albert John Luthuli, then president of the ANC, and South Africa’s first Nobel Peace Laureate, met his still unexplained death forty years ago, near his home in Groutville, KwaDukuza. Inspired by his patriotism and deeply held Christian principles, Chief Luthuli had led the liberation movement for thirteen years. And, as he recalled in his autobiography, for decades the oppressed people had very patiently knocked at a barred door, without response.

In marking the passing of this great patriot, South Africa will be honouring both the man and the values and principles he had fought for all his life; the very values contained in our democratic Constitution.

Ten years later, in 19977, yet another great patriot met an untimely death. While the circumstances of Steve Bantu Biko death absolutely explain how he was literally tortured and beaten to death by his jailors, the courts of those days held no one accountable for his murder. Perhaps some of the honourable members should be reminded that while the Judges of the apartheid regime might well have been very sober, they were anything but honourable!

The brutal murder of that young patriot shocked the world; the callousness of a judiciary that refused to hold anyone to account for that dastardly deed, bears testimony to the moral bankruptcy of that regime.

The thirtieth anniversary of Steve Biko’s murder will be appropriately marked, not to point fingers at anyone, but by way of affirming the democratic and liberatory thrust of the politics he represented.

The massive assault of media freedom that coincided with the murder of Biko should also serve as a timely reminder to us all of the high price exacted from the people of the country for the freedom the media in our country today enjoys. Thomas Paine once wrote that we esteem too lightly that which gain rather cheaply. The tears, the blood and the very lives of the martyrs who were sacrificed so that our journalists, editors and newspaper owners today no longer have to nervously peer over their shoulders before putting pen to paper, testify to what media freedom in South Africa really cost.

How many of our latter-day journalists ever consider that cost?

It was in that spirit that I responded to a query from the Afrikaans magazine “Die Huisgenoot”, about Bok van Blerk’s song ‘De La Rey’ . Whatever “coded message” others might attribute to van Blerk’s song, he says it has no contemporary political relevance. I reiterate my best wishes for the success of his song, and may he compose and sing many more.

Madam Speaker,

South Africa has left behind us the previous bilingual dispensation, that entailed the promotion of only English and Afrikaans to the exclusion of the other languages spoken in our country. Government has accepted its obligation to promote and advance all South Africa’s official languages. I once again emphasize that Afrikaans, like all the other official languages, will be actively promoted and protected by the government, the hysteria in certain quarters notwithstanding!

The re-affirmation of this country’s African identity by the correction of the corruption of African names, the resurrection of African names that were arbitrarily abolished or replaced by previous regimes, is not a threat to any of our language communities. And, contrary to the popular urban legend, the overwhelming majority of name changes approved by myself and previous ministers entailed not Afrikaans names, but African names that had been mis-spelled, corrupted or other wise done violence.

As we cast our eyes back over these past thirteen years of democracy, all South Africans, all of us, on either side of this august house, can justly say;

“Not bad, not bad at all!”

We are indeed creating a better life for our people! We are contributing to the creation of a better world.

-ends-

With your indulgence, I want to end of, Mr Chairperson, with the word to the honourable leader of the DA. We have been told that the honourable Leon will be leaving political life during the course of this year. And I want to wish him well in his future endeavours. But, I want to say as well that we will sorely miss him on our side of the House. It is true the honourable Leon raised the DA, which used to sit over there – four lonely members- to what they are today.

(An HON MEMBER: Seven.)

They were seven, were they? Oh, I didn’t see the other three. Sorry! - to what it is today . But if you think about what his impact has been on our side of the House? We, the ANC, came in here in 1994 with 63% support from the electorate, our support now stands at over 70%! And for that we want to thank him.

Thank you very much, honourable. Tony Leon.

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