WEDNESDAY, 23 JUNE 2004 __

                PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
                                ____

The House met at 14:04.

The Speaker took the Chair and requested members to observe a moment of silence for prayers or meditation.

ANNOUNCEMENTS, TABLINGS AND COMMITTEE REPORTS - see col 000.

Vote No 1 - The Presidency:

                         APPROPRIATION BILL

The PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC: Madam Speaker and Deputy Speaker, hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, this year we have already spoken twice from this podium to present two state of the nation addresses. These covered the short and medium-term objectives of the Government, as well as the programmes intended to achieve them. It is not necessary that we use the occasion of the consideration of the Budget Vote on the Presidency to repeat what we said in our February and May addresses and we will not do so. Rather, we will try to focus on the critically important matter of the capacity of the state machinery to implement the programmes we have announced.

As on other occasions, the Deputy President, the hon Jacob Zuma, and the Minister in the Presidency, the hon Essop Pahad, will also address the NA to reflect on the areas of work of the Presidency for which they are responsible. As we indicated in our addresses earlier this year, we are determined to focus on the challenge of the implementation of the programmes we which have already announced so as to ensure that we accelerate the achievement of the objectives we have set ourselves.

As part of this, we are in the process of improving the operation of the mechanisms within Government that must ensure the proper monitoring and evaluation of work being done to implement the Government’s programme. This would help us to improve the quality of the outcomes of Government activities; an objective which we have sought to pursue for a number of years. Naturally, our first area of attention will be the Programme of Action we announced during the May state of the nation address.

In this regard, the Presidency has provided all our national Ministries and departments with a copy of the tasks they have to carry out, with a clear indication of the timeframes within which they are expected to complete these tasks. These tasks include both those we mentioned during the May state of the nation address and others that predate this address. We will, therefore, ensure that the Presidency has the necessary capacity to monitor and evaluate the implementation of these comprehensive programmes. Among other things we have to ensure that the Government identifies any impediments to the successful implementation of these programmes early, so that we address these quickly before they cause the failure of the agreed programmes.

At the same time, we recognise the keen interest of our people as a whole in the progress and problems we achieve and experience as we pursue these programmes. We are also mindful of the comments made by the hon members last month, that they are also keen to monitor the implementation of the Government programme. Accordingly, consistent with the objective of continuously improving the two-way communication between the Government and the people, the Presidency has decided to place before the people a report on progress made in the implementation of the Programme of Action, which will be constantly updated.

Our people, including honourable members, will therefore have the opportunity of assessing the Government’s progress in implementing the announced Programme of Action, side by side with the Government’s own assessment of this progress. As hon members are aware, the Government Communication and Information System, GCIS, has already put on the Internet the Batho Pele Gateway Portal which we mentioned during the May state of the nation address. The Minister for the Public Service and Administration, the hon Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, provided further information relating to this portal during her Budget Vote on Monday.

The GCIS has requested comments from the public on the portal to ensure that by the time it is formally launched within the time period we indicated in May, it is properly designed to address the needs of the people. I trust that hon members will take the trouble to answer the questionnaire that has been provided on the Government website to assist the public in making its comments. We will open a page on the gateway portal containing information on the Government’s Programme of Action. By checking on this page, the public will be able to follow progress with regard to the implementation of this Programme of Action. It will also be possible for the public to communicate its views about the programme directly to the Government, through the Internet and other more traditional ways and means. Further to improve the capacity of the Presidency to discharge its functions of oversight, co-ordination and evaluation, more work will be done to increase the effectiveness especially of the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Service unit, the PCAS, working together with the Cabinet secretariat.

To facilitate the work of the PCAS, Ministries and departments are working on business plans for each of the tasks they have to carry out. These business plans will include an indication of the resources allocated for the fulfilment of each of the tasks, as well as the necessary implementation timeframes.

The Government has also agreed that we should use the system of Cabinet committees to monitor and co-ordinate the implementation of the Programme of Action. This will be done once every two months, bringing together Ministers, Deputy Ministers and directors-general who belong to the various clusters to consider progress with regard to the tasks relating to each cluster. This will improve co-ordination to ensure that the programmes of the various Ministries and departments are consistent with one another.

The enhanced focus on the challenge of implementation will also give us the possibility practically to assess the capacity of Government to carry out its developmental functions. Among other things, this relates to matters raised by the Minister for the Public Service and Administration during her Budget Vote, with regard to competence within the Public Service. As the hon Minister has said, we have to ensure that our public management is firmly rooted in the principles of efficiency and effectiveness, transparency and accountability.

She went on to say that administration is about the day-to-day systems and procedures that make governance work so that institutions and resources are effectively utilised. The next phase of public service and administration in South Africa will require that skills sets and approaches be valued and applied in all components of the Public Service. One of the mechanisms that will spearhead this is the compulsory induction programme that we agreed to during the most recent Cabinet lekgotla. Accordingly, every serving public servant will be exposed to this as a matter of urgency, and every new recruit who joins the Public Service will go to an appropriate level of induction soon after being employed.

And we clearly have to do what the Minister pronounced when she said that. Over the coming year, we will be specifically investigating the extent to which Public Service standards are really being set, measured and met. Service users must be advised of these standards by the relevant Government offices that they are dealing with, and at the same time should be informed about recourse mechanisms available to them if standards are not met. We will rely on the assistance of our citizens to give us honest feedback on their exposure to Government departments.

To this I must add that this obviously entails an undertaking on our part as Government that we will do everything possible to respond to this honest feedback from the people. Our Ministers and Deputy Ministers will have to ensure that the Government honours this commitment. Needless to say, the further improvement in the efficacy of the Government must include a sustained and heightened offensive against corruption. In this regard again we would like to refer to the comments made by the Minister for the Public Service and Administration, which reflect the approach of Government to this important matter. In her Budget Vote address she said that South Africa may be a relatively new democracy with a young Public Service, but in terms of what we have achieved to raise our level of integrity, we rank with the best in the world. The Public Integrity Index released by the Centre for Public Integrity confirms that this Government is serious about fighting corruption. In 10 short years we have managed to be ranked in the index amongst far more established democracies.

The Public Service Anticorruption Strategy remains the blueprint for anticorruption work in the public sector, and its implementation is part of the core mandate of DPSA’s Public Service Anticorruption Unit. The second national anticorruption summit will take place in November. The event will seek to strengthen intersectoral co-operation and assess our progress in addressing corruption, measured against global standards and our national requirements. The summit will also define the national anticorruption programme for the next decade. Accordingly, as we work to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Government, we will also continue vigorously to implement the Public Service Anticorruption Strategy in all its elements. We also hope that Parliament will proceed to ratify the United Nations Convention against Corruption, whose provisions we will have to respect practically. Necessarily, our success with regard to the implementation of Government programmes will require that we further strengthen our intergovernmental system, consistent with the principle of cooperative governance contained in our Constitution.

As we indicated earlier this year, we have been reviewing our intergovernmental system to improve its functioning. To this end, the three spheres of government will meet in Pretoria in two days’ time, on Friday 25 June, to consider the National Framework and Bill on Intergovernmental Relations. The meeting will bring together national Government, the Premiers and some of their MECs, Salga, as well as the national and provincial directors-general. The Minister for Provincial and Local Government will report on the outcome of this review process when it becomes available.

In the mean time, we will continue to pay close attention to the effectiveness of the system of co-operation between national and provincial government, effected through the regular and institutionalised meetings between Ministers and MECs, the Minmecs. At the same time, we will work to improve the functioning of the Presidential Co-ordination Council, which brings together the Presidency and the Premiers. As part of this process, a greater effort will be made to integrate the planning, implementation and monitoring processes relating to the Government’s Programme of Action to which we have already referred.

In the past the Minister for the Public Service and Administration reported on the intervention made by the national Government to assist the government of the Eastern Cape to overcome a number of problems it faced. This work is continuing. Nevertheless, we have learnt many lessons through this intervention. We are convinced that many of these lessons would add value to the effort to improve governance in other provinces as well.

I mention this because the process of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our system of government, with regard to the task of implementation, must extend beyond the national sphere to include provincial government as well. We will, therefore, work with the provincial governments to achieve this objective. In this regard, we will also draw on outstanding examples of good practice evolved by a number of our provincial governments.

With regard to the experience we have accumulated as a result of the Eastern Cape intervention, we would also like to draw the attention of the hon members to the observation made by the hon Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, that our experience in the Eastern Cape has helped to define an operating model for integrated institutional support that is being refined for use elsewhere. As part of this, the Department of Public Service and Administration is preparing to implement an early warning system and a structured system for providing institutional support.

To achieve the objective of effective implementation of our policies and programmes, we will have to pay even greater attention to the strengthening of our system of local government. In this regard, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to Salga for convening the 5th session of the Local Government Consultative Assembly so soon after we spoke of the challenges of local government in the May state of the nation address.

In his address during his Budget Vote earlier this week, Minister Sydney Mufamadi said that critical to sustaining the delivery of services to the masses of the population is the new system of local government that was established in December 2000. With the ensemble of 284 municipalities, over 3 700 ward committees and about 9 000 councillors, the local government sphere should indeed become the provider-of-choice with regard to the delivery of basic services. However, the limited capacity and resources of some municipalities are clearly an obstacle to action, whether in the areas of planning, budgeting, or implementation. Some of our municipalities rest on a deficient human capital base, thus they fail to implement new strategies of delivery and cost recovery.

He reported that the Department of Provincial and Local Government has undertaken a thoroughgoing capacity survey in order to determine the constraints faced by local government in policy design and implementation. He also said that we have identified a number of municipalities that are experiencing a short-term need for intense, hands-on support. His department is assembling a high-calibre team to be deployed in order to work with municipalities and tackle the identified tasks, but since this support is meant to fade out over time, provinces will immediately replicate this process in order to position themselves so that they can continue to support municipalities in their own areas of jurisdiction.

Indeed, as he said, we seek to make local government more dependable as an enabler for provincial and national departments to realise their development and delivery targets. Undoubtedly, the June 25 Workshop on Inter-Governmental Relations to which we have referred will, once more, draw attention to the enhanced importance of the sphere of local government. Hopefully it will go further to spell out how we should respond to this reality, indicating the improvements that must necessarily be made to the functioning of our system of co-operative governance.

In this context, Minister Mufamadi said on Monday, that, given the steady maturation of local government, the geography of development and underdevelopment, and the variable municipal capacity to address development challenges, we are undertaking a revision of the intrasphere equitable share formula. This revision will be finalised in the current financial year so as to ensure that we start the 2005-06 financial year with an allocative pattern which speaks to conditions as they actually obtain on the ground. While this work is going on, we will have to concentrate on the task mentioned by Minister Mufamadi, of providing intense, hands-on support for those of our municipalities that require such support. Fortunately, both the Department of Provincial and Local Government and Salga already have enough information to point us to the municipalities that require this assistance.

The strengthening of the capacity of our system of local government will require the closest possible co-operation between especially the Departments of Provincial and Local Government and of Public Service and Administration, as well as the Provincial MECs for Local Government and Salga. In the context of what we are discussing, the effective implementation of Government programmes to accelerate the process of creating jobs and fighting poverty, we must also reiterate our commitment to speed up the deployment of community development workers as well as the empowerment of the structures of traditional government to contribute to the common development effort.

From the very first day of our democracy, we have insisted on both a people-centred and a people-driven process of change. Our focus on improving the effectiveness of the system of governance must accordingly and necessarily go together with an intensification of our campaign to draw the masses of our people into the accelerated process of change that will be represented by the effective implementation of our Government’s Programme of Action. This makes it imperative that we strengthen all processes intended to intensify the interaction between the Government and the people, to activate the people to play a meaningful role in the struggle for a better life for all and to increase the transparency and accountability of Government.

Of particular importance in this regard will be the need for us to ensure that the local government ward committees meet regularly and function as they were intended. We have to ensure that they are involved in the implementation at local level of the various initiatives that constitute the Government’s Programme of Action. The national and provincial Government imbizo programmes will also have to be reviewed to improve their ability to ensure meaningful interaction between these spheres of government and the people. The Presidency has started this review process, and I’m convinced that it will result in future izimbizo enhancing our contact with the people and therefore enhancing the quality of Government’s service to the people. And because of the importance of these outcomes, the imbizo programmes will also be assessed under our system of monitoring and evaluation to improve the impact of the views expressed by the people on the overall functioning of Government. This will provide an effective addition to the process of translating the concept that ``the people shall govern’’ into practice.

In the February state of the nation address, we said: ``The advances we must record demand that we ensure that the public sector discharges its responsibilities to our people as a critical player in the process of the growth, reconstruction and development of our country. In particular, this will require that we further strengthen our system of local government and ensure that the system of traditional government plays the role ascribed to it in our Constitution and legislation.’’

We further said: ``We must achieve greater progress with regard to the integration of our system of governance, achieving seamless co-operation both within and among the spheres of government. At the same time, we must further consolidate the practice of creating public-private partnerships and building Government-civil society co-operation, to ensure that we utilise our collective capacities to give further impetus to the overall development and transformation of our country.’’

In the May state of the nation address, we indicated some of the tasks Government would carry out to achieve these objectives. Today’s address has sought to build on this, focusing on the necessary additional interventions we have to make to build a system of governance capable of serving the people, within the context of the letter and spirit of our Constitution.

In his 2002 book, The World We’re In, the columnist and former editor-in- chief of the British newspaper The Observer, Will Hutton, has drawn attention to the global struggle to defend the public sector against an ideological onslaught that seeks, as he puts it: ``… to celebrate individualism and denigrate the state’’.

Given that we are a young democracy, I believe that we should debate the issues raised by Will Hutton to help us define what kind of South Africa we seek to build. I will therefore take the liberty to quote somewhat extensively some of the critical points that Hutton raises. I also do this because there are some in our country who propagate the views that Will Hutton contests, seeking to persuade our people to adopt a particular stance towards the issue of the state, which, if accepted and implemented, would shatter the dreams of the millions of our people for a better life.

Writing of his own country, the UK, he says: ``There are no great political movements or inspirational causes. Voter apathy is widespread. Our political leaders are well-intentioned, but they are at a loss as to how to revive a belief in politics and public purpose. The public realm is in eclipse. It is almost as though citizenship has gone into abeyance. And yet there remain great issues. The terms of society’s social contract remain as vexed and contentious as ever. The rich grow richer, while disadvantage remains acute. Equality of opportunity, let alone income and wealth, remain elusive. Public services are inadequate.’’

Arguing his case further, he writes:

``The idea of the public realm is in eclipse, and with it the concept of civilisation. Increasingly, we British are rarely citizens who make common cause and share common destinies. The scope for public initiative and endeavour, through which our common values are expressed, is contracting with giddy speed. Inequality of income and opportunity is increasing, despite well-intentioned efforts to reverse it.

Wealth and stratospheric incomes are portrayed as the just reward of individual enterprise, badges of individual worth. The poor and disadvantaged, unless they declare their readiness to work, are increasingly felt to deserve their status. Government and its associated tools of regulation, legislation and taxation are a currency whose very legitimacy has to be fought for. As the new conservatism has honed its rhetoric and political programmes in the US to celebrate individualism and denigrate the state, so that same philosophy has become seamlessly part of the new international `common sense’. We are all becoming American conservatives now.

So it is that the syllogism that the rights of the propertied and the freedom of business come before any assertion of the public interest or social concerns has become the consensus orthodoxy. These are deemed to be the only circumstances in which wealth generation and employment can be assured, and thus the citizen would stand to lose more by putting these at risk than he or she might gain from public action asserting common interests. The law of private property rules supreme.

In this climate taxation is depicted as the confiscation of what is properly our own - an intolerable burden that should be reduced. The social, the collective and the public realm are portrayed as the enemies of prosperity and individual autonomy, and, worse, are opposed to the moral basis of society, grounded as it should be in the absolute responsibility of individuals to shoulder their burdens and exercise their rights alone.’’

He goes on to say: ``Civility is under siege as a market society makes strangers of us all. While our public horizons shrink, we search for satisfaction and contentment in our inner, private lives - but we turn in on ourselves thus not out of choice; rather, we recognise that engagement with the world on any other terms than those that enthrone the primacy of market values and diminish those of public citizenship is increasingly without purpose.

The conservative creed we have been asked to accept barely needs rehearsing. The Americans live with increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth. Indeed, many argue it is the necessary stick and carrot upon which a successful capitalism depends - so others should follow. The message is merciless. Welfare is portrayed as disabling the poor from taking proper responsibility for themselves. The poor and disadvantaged should expect no more than minimal, time-limited and means-tested assistance.

The conservative American presumption is that the federal government should exercise its authority as minimally as possible. Individual states in the union should be given the responsibility for doing as little as they can, and the federal government should confine itself to the provision of national security. Governance in the rest of the world should follow suit. If there are malevolent social consequences, then react with a tough welfare system and repress crime. Do not wring your hands over the causes of crime; stamp it out with a repressive criminal justice system, extending even to endorsing the death penalty.’’

Will Hutton argues that: ``Western democracies have been characterised by one broad family of ideas that might be called left - a belief in the social reduction in inequality, the provision of public services, the principle that workers should be treated as assets rather than commodities, regulation of enterprise, rehabilitation of criminals, tolerance and respect for minorities - and another broad family of ideas that might be called right. An honouring of our inherited institutional fabric, a respect for order, a belief that private property rights and profit are essential to the operation of the market economy, a suspicion of worker rights, faith in the remedial value of punitive justice and distrust of the new.’’

There can be no doubt about where we stand with regard to this great divide. It is to pursue the goals contained in what Hutton calls the ``broad family of ideas that might be called left’’, that we seek to build the system of governance we indicated today and in previous addresses. The obligations of the democratic state to the masses of our people do not allow that we should join those who celebrate individualism and denigrate the state.

We would never succeed to eradicate the legacy of colonialism and apartheid if we joined the campaign to portray ``the social, the collective and the public realm as the enemies of prosperity and individual autonomy, opposed to the moral basis of society, grounded as it should be, in terms of right-wing ideology, in the absolute responsibility of individuals to shoulder their burdens and exercise their rights alone.

This is precisely what we meant when we said in the May state of the nation address that the advances we must record demand that we ensure that the public sector discharges its responsibilities to the people as a critical player in the process of the growth, reconstruction and development of our country.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Deputy President, the Minister in the Presidency, Directors-General Frank Chikane and Joel Netshitenzhe, my advisers, and other workers in the Presidency who are working hard to ensure that the Presidency contributes what it must to the building of a public sector that truly discharges its responsibilities to the people within the context of available resources.

I would also like to acknowledge with appreciation the co-operation extended to the Presidency by all the spheres of government, as well the private sector, the trade unions, civil society and the masses of our people as a whole, which has helped us to avoid the gloomy outcome described by Will Hutton, whereby ``the British are rarely citizens who make common cause and share common destinies’’.

Sadly, Director-General Frank Chikane could not be with us today as he and the rest of the Chikane family prepare for the burial on Saturday of his mother, Sophania Erenia Chikane. Once more, we extend our sincere condolences to him and the rest of the Chikane family.

I’m honoured to commend the Budget of the Presidency to hon members, and thank you very much. [Applause.]

Mr E M DIPICO: Madam Speaker, hon President, Deputy President, hon members, comrades and friends, the Presidency as the apex of Government is challenged at many and varied fronts that relate to our country and people. All of these challenges relate to the objectives of ensuring a better life for all our people and creating a prosperous South Africa in the context of a growing and developing subregion and continent. These challenges resonated throughout the state of the nation address delivered to this House by the hon President Comrade Thabo Mbeki.

Key among these is to ensure that the Presidency is better suited as the apex of Government to undertake the many challenges that relate to ensuring that the highest point of Government machinery is geared towards meeting the deadlines articulated in the programme outlined by the President. In this regard the Presidency must not only have the requisite capacities and resources, it must also mobilise the broadest possible forces to ensure we meet the challenges we set ourselves. It is expected that the President and the Presidency must be able to table regular reports on the varied commitments made on behalf of Government in this House and elsewhere. Therefore the overall co-ordination of this Government, the monitoring and evaluation dimensions of the Presidency will continue to play a critical role in this and ensure that these are used to assess the policy impact generally.

South Africa continues to play a key role in continental affairs across the globe. These commitments and others also have an impact on the expected role the Presidency must play in order to assist its principals to discharge their functions with effectiveness and efficiency. The Presidency is fully committed to garner the broadest possible forces behind the national objectives of our country. To this extent, there is greater emphasis also on ensuring that the opinions of the key stakeholders are solicited. These platforms also provided Government with the basis of sharing experiences and information regarding the best possible path of attaining our common objectives.

These partnerships are key and meant to afford the Presidency with avenues to also share its vision with society in general. Stakeholders such as churches and the religious fraternity are key in the programmes of the state to ensure that we deal with the degeneration of the moral fibre of our society. The youth, women, the disabled, the elderly and the children will continue to form a key component of the stakeholders with whom from time to time Government will converse and strategise to ensure we move closer to the objective of creating a caring society. The ongoing consultations and deliberations between the various Presidential joint working groups and other working groups of business, labour, traditional leaders, civil society, etc will also enhance the policy and delivery of services of Government.

The ANC is fully committed to ensuring a better life for all the people of our country and the Freedom Charter forms part of the historic mandate of the ANC. During this month of June we will also celebrate the 49th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, which was adopted at the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955. The vision espoused by the Freedom Charter continues to inspire millions of South Africans in their struggle for a better future. The Charter captures the historic demands of the people of South Africa for a united nonracial, nonsexist democratic society. In its preamble, the Freedom Charter states that: ``Only a democratic state based on the will of the people can secure to all their birthright without distinction of race, colour, sex and creed.’’

The Freedom Charter speaks about the aspirations of all the people of South Africa and was a historic moment in the struggle for freedom and democracy. Key among its clauses is the clause that states that the people shall govern. This important vision is indeed the key part of the governance and Government’s vision as espoused by the Presidency. When he spoke some weeks ago in this House on the occasion of the state of the nation address, the hon President Thabo Mbeki articulated the commitments of the ANC-led Government to ensure we realise the key elements of the Freedom Charter. He spoke to the key elements of the clause, the people shall govern, when he said: We will strive to unite all our people to implement the Programme of Action we announced on Friday - that day - in favour of a democratic South Africa that truly belongs to all who live in it. We will do this because we are convinced that our unity gives us the possibility to accelerate and advance to a South Africa that is free of poverty and the racial gender and geographic disparities bequeathed to us by our history.

That Programme of Action, as outlined by the President of the Republic, forms the key work that the Presidency must carry out without fail in the days and months ahead. Indeed the entire spheres and levels of Government in our country are about that Programme of Action. This will give meaning to the vote of those who participate and took upon themselves to shape the democracy that South Africa is developing and nurturing in the interests of all our people and prosperity for all.

For its part the Presidency will continue to engage the different communities and ordinary people to ensure that they too are able to hold Government accountable and develop confidence in our systems and procedures. The Presidential Imbizo programme will be further enhanced and developed. This programme is key in that it allows Government much greater contact and interaction with ordinary people and can facilitate different interphases between the Presidency and ordinary people. This speaks to the very clause of the celebrated Freedom Charter: the people shall govern. This programme will also be replicated at different levels of Government, such as the local and provincial government, where our mayors and Premiers and their teams will also be meeting ordinary people and seeking to address their immediate issues, as well as issues which face them daily. This will ensure that ordinary people with whom we interact with during the course of our election campaign continue to dialogue with Government and that they derive joy from those who are honoured and privileged to lead on their behalf.

This is key to the ongoing development of our democracy and democratic processes, for these different stakeholders must also be seen and heard in an ongoing transformation process which impacts on their lives. We will only be able to realise the objectives of the Freedom Charter and create a society which is nonsexist, nonracial and prosperous when all of us get behind the national goals of our country, including all our people in the rural and urban areas, both rich and poor.

Over the years Government has been able to also communicate much better through such interactions and some pertinent issues of our people have been resolved through these initiatives. We have been able to close the gaps reported by the departments which come into the Presidency regarding the issues affecting our people. We can find a way to deal with the gaps which pertain to those things. As the systems and procedures of Government develop there also will be bottlenecks and other such blockages in the system and these can be identified and attended to promptly.

The programmatic character of Government’s Programme of Action, as outlined by the President’s state of the nation address, with specific practical commitments and timeframes, creates a strong platform for imbizo interaction around public involvement in the implementation and monitoring of programmes, in particular those most directly concerned with promoting growth and development and with fighting poverty. The imbizo has proved a popular form of communication, answering to the strong preference amongst the public for face-to-face interaction with Government and direct communication with our people. At the same time there is also an insistence on the part of our communities and public that such interaction should be followed by better monitoring and feedback of implementation of issues raised in such serious gatherings.

The immediate challenges we face as we implement this very good programme of imbizo is to ensure that we mobilise all our political principals in all spheres of Government for maximum participation in the period leading to the national focus week, without detracting from other activities which need to be carried out by Ministries and Government. As a nation and as a leadership we want to ensure that we focus on the implementation of the Programme of Action and that we go back to the people to ensure that we can get progress in terms of that Programme of Action. We have to ensure that we pay special attention to promoting local government participation and to ensuring that such participation is sensitive to the need to enhance the responsiveness of local government to the concerns of our communities. The imbizo focus week should contribute to the objective of strengthening the functioning of ward committees, which is the lifeblood of the community and the people on the ground.

We have to ensure that there is a co-ordination of communication in a framework that integrates all of the focus week activities with the President’s and Deputy President’s izimbizos popularising Government’s Programme of Action. And as we go out to our people building partnerships for the implementation of that Programme of Action, it will be coherently informed by the core message of our people’s contract to speed up implementation of our people’s contract to expand skill and economic opportunities and ensure co-operative governance for faster implementation.

It is therefore important to have sufficient resources to meet all these and other challenges of the Presidency in order to strengthen our democracy, empower our people and build partnerships as part of the people’s contract to build a better South Africa and a better world. Finally, the ANC will support the Budget Vote No 1 in order to successfully carry out our mandate given by the electorate. I thank you. [Applause.]

The LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Madam Speaker, Mr President, colleagues, the task of this Parliament in today’s debate is to deal with the balance sheet of our nation’s progress. We must acknowledge that which is succeeding and debate vigorously and openly how to change the things that are failing.

I was very struck by the President’s ideological depiction of The World We Are In, to quote Mr Hutton, this afternoon. I have had sight of that book but I have read very closely the predecessor book, The State We Are In. I think that if one looks at what Will Hutton says about Britain, it’s very interesting how the Prime Minister of Britain, who sits with the ANC in Socialist International, has actually taken private sector policies and initiatives and applied them to the reform of the public services. That seems exactly the way to go; in other words, to take the best of the private sector and put it into the Public Sector. That seems sensible.

The second thing - here the game was rather given away, I thought, by the hon Minister of Labour, my old friend, who yesterday complained bitterly about underperforming Setas, quite rightly. He said in his budget debate speech that the problem with certain Setas is that they don’t fulfil the mandate that they have been given, and we will give them attention.

But, surely, the problem is within the construction of the Seta system itself, as one example, because complaint after complaint from business person after business person is that they pay millions of rands - some of them - for proper bona fide training that they give in their enterprises. Yet, the state sets up a completely parallel training enterprise system without giving recompense for those who are already providing training. That seems, with respect Mr President, where our own reform should begin.

If we take Britain as an example of a private-public partnership, why is it that Britain is currently negotiating in the EU for a withdrawal from the labour law provisions of the EU? In other words, they want an opt-out provision from the onerous labour laws of the rest of the European Union. Even within the most left states of the European Union - as you would describe them - such as Germany, you have Agenda 2010 being driven by a socialist government, the SPD government of Chancellor Schroeder because the employment-stifling laws in Germany are crushing job creation in that country. Therefore, if we are going to adopt The World We Are In or The State We Are In, as a departure point, we should also look at some of the lessons of reform that are contained in those volumes.

I think it is wrong to try and depict opponents of the ANC as being in favour of some kind of libertarian night-watchman state. In fact, we are not. We believe in a liberal democratic solution and that means, in essence, as much market as possible, and as much state as is necessary. The question which has to be answered, and no doubt you will do it in your reply, Sir, is whether the model of the woolly mammoth state is appropriate in the age of the Internet, indeed the modern and the mouse. [Interjections.] You see, I write my own speeches, Mr Manuel, maybe you should take a tip.

I actually want to draw attention to something the President spoke about when he identified Government as being broadly of the left. I would submit that this Government is somewhat to the left and somewhat to the right. There is a central contradiction that goes through the heart of Government policy which we should perhaps talk about in this debate. There are three specific areas where the contradiction regarding the constitutional ideals to which this whole Chamber - with one or two exceptions who weren’t in favour of the Constitution - is committed to an ANC ideology on one hand, and that tends to undermine our goals.

I think we should start with the economy. On the one hand, President Mbeki has often spoken, and quite correctly, about the need for economic growth and job creation. On the other hand, the ANC is giving off more and more signals of more state intervention, a more top-down approach to black economic empowerment, all of which will have a cumulative effect of discouraging investment.

Then we have the second issue which is at the centre of our public debate at the moment, and that is the issue of race. On the one hand, the Government quite correctly pays homage to the ideal of a nonracial, nonsexist South Africa. On the other hand, the ANC in parts is driving relentlessly a programme of racial transformation, the net effect of which, whatever its original intentions are, is to reracialise our society. [Interjections.]

The third element where these come together is in our foreign policy. On the one hand, the President has formulated a bold new vision of Africa in the world through Nepad, which we hardly subscribe to, and on the other hand the ANC Government is maintaining a failed policy towards failed states such as Zimbabwe, and is supporting countries and individuals around the world who actually stand in stark contradiction to the very human rights culture that the ANC has done so much to popularise in South Africa and the world. [Interjections.]

Let’s start with the economy. And, let me do something anyway though it seems the hon Minister in the Presidency doesn’t listen with his good ear to it. That is to acknowledge what has gone right in South Africa’s macroeconomic policy. Growth has doubled from where it was in the decade leading up to 1994. Inflation is a third of what it was 10 years ago and our foreign reserves are approximately R60 billion as opposed to the R10 billion that the Government inherited from the empty larder bequeathed by the Government’s new friend, Mr F W De Klerk.

But, for all that is good, much has gone wrong. Our growth rate of 1,9% per annum remains very low, not by international standards only, but even by the standards of the most successful developing economies in the world: China - 9,8%; India - 10,4%; and Botswana - 6,7%. Our expanded definition rate for unemployment in the economy is now over 40%; twice what it was in the much-maligned United States during the Great Depression. Foreign direct investment remains pitifully low at only 1,5% of our GDP.

Some of these and their answers aren’t in your book, Mr Turok, and I am delighted the President reads Mr Hutton and not Prof Turok, because we might get onto the better path. We are convinced that some of these problems are the direct result of the contradictions that lie at the heart of Government policy. For example, four years ago, this Government, when the President took over, promised rapid privatisation. Today it is apparent that there is a u-turn. It was announced last week by the responsible Minister: no privatisation of Transnet; no privatisation of Eskom; no privatisation of Denel. [Applause.] They clap, and all the more they clap the more investment stays away because you don’t want investors to come in. [Interjections.] Don’t clap against investment in South Africa. [Interjections.]

Then we get to Government’s empowerment policy. Now, the essence of this policy is, once again, not what it promises but what it delivers. Government policy says it is to help the many not the few. Let’s look at the scoreboard, to use an empowerment indicator. There were R42,2 billion’s worth of black economic empowerment deals last year. Sixty percent of these, R25,2 billion, went to companies owned by two men, effectively.

As Mr Moeletsi has pointed out, this is an approach that makes no economic sense. He has suggested that the Government should focus on small business development instead. There is so much that Government could do: establish trusts in the rural areas and poor urban areas to enable those trusts to become the beneficiaries of empowerment deals; encourage companies to enact employee share-ownership schemes. That is what broad-based empowerment ought to mean. Instead of that, we have the Minerals and Energy Minister taking a hard line against foreign investors and coming down essentially in support of capital divestiture of foreign multinationals. She said in Maputo, two weeks ago, and I quote:

I know by insisting on black shareholding we are taking a risk of alienating some shareholders. It is a risk worth taking.

But it is the ordinary people who suffer when investors don’t come here. Much more recently, only last week, we had the question of property ownership without a White Paper or a consultation process. The Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, hon Thoko Didiza, has announced that foreign property ownership is likely to be restricted. She said and I quote:

We need a policy framework that will stipulate that no foreigner can own land. [Interjections,] No foreigner can own land. So, on the one hand we say come in, and on the other hand we say stay out. [Interjections.] Now, I say this because just across the road from where Parliament is meeting there is a huge redevelopment taking place in the central business district of Cape Town, which I thought was a jolly good thing. But this comes from billions of rands invested by investors who are Irish and that is leading to the refurbishment of this city.

I understand that there is a concern in Government about sky-high property prices. We recently received information from our councillors in Cape Town that the family of the dictator or President of Equatorial Guinea, President Obiang Nguema, is buying property or has bought property in Clifton Beach worth R23,5 million. Now I don’t know whether that property is to be used as a safe house for the day his power runs out or if it’s just another case of a foreign property speculator on the Atlantic coast. But either way, restrictions on foreign ownership are a red flag for foreign investors. If some president from another country wants to buy expensive property, we should put the welcome mat out to everyone. That, to me, is a contradiction. What signal are we sending out and whose interests are we serving?

We did’nt get to the issue of race-based demographics. Fundamentally, Mr President, it must be correct that if you have a nonracial society and a nonracial constitutional order, there is a real problem when transformation negates individual merit and treats people’s destiny as though their destinations were written on their skins. That, fundamentally, must be the wrong idea. Surely, individuals should be free to define their own destiny and the people are more than the sum of their demographic parts. In this regard, the debate was not started in this Parliament in this session by the DA, but it was, in fact, started by the Minister of Defence who said in his parliamentary briefing early this month, and I quote:

When will we cease to be Africans, coloureds, Indians and whites and become merely South Africans?

I notice the ANC doesn’t applaud that statement. But to me that simple question goes straight to the heart of the contradiction in Government policy.

The Minister’s very reasonable remarks were dismissed by the usual crowd of ideologues. Christine Qunta, for example, wrote that the real culprits in transformation were young white people who she said, and I quote:

… had a persistent pessimism and an aversion to taking steps to correct the imbalances of the past.

We have not heard from the President on this subject. Which side is the Presidency regarding this issue? Will the racial extremism of the likes of Christine Qunta prevail or will the nonracialism of Minister Lekota be supported? [Interjections.]

In foreign policy, there is also, to use Mr Moeletsi Mbeki’s words, ``something of a double vision’’. The President can boast some very significant successes. It is a credit to the President and his Office that the country has been taken from the Southern tip of Africa to enjoy a presence in the corridors of world power and a seat at the table of the G8. But Government’s formal commitments to Nepad, SADC and African Union often stand in stark contrast to the actions and rhetoric of the Government, in practice.

So we have the situation of Monsieur Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti who is now being given hospitality here. [Interjections.] It’s not a question of some kind of temporary shelter. There is all the difference in the world between extending a humanitarian gesture and rolling out the red carpet, because that sends another signal about what we are serious about in democracy and international relations.

To me, these contradictions need to be addressed and the President should take the country into his confidence and thereby address them and take this country forward. [Applause.]

Mrs S A SEATON: Madam Speaker, His Excellency the President, hon Deputy President, hon members of this House, the President’s Office in a certain sense transcends the rough and tumble of the day-to-day political process, because the Office of the Presidency contains the offices of both the head of state and the head of the national executive.

It is in the interests of all our citizens that the Office of the Presidency functions smoothly and efficiently, and that the interaction between the Presidency and the institution of Parliament is both streamlined and seamless. In this regard, it is gratifying that the budget makes adequate provision for the President and the Deputy President to fulfil their constitutional obligations.

While talking about the interaction between the institution and Parliament, it is said: ``The turtle only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.’’ I am going to stick my neck out at this point, Mr President, because it has become expected of me to use every opportunity I can to push for members’ benefits, members’ resources and, on this particular occasion, the salaries of members of Parliament. Several years back, the then Goldstone Commission recommended that regular salary increases should be automatic as at 1 April of every year. It was suggested at the time that such increases should be 1% below CPI.

There was an undertaking at the time that the annual Goldstone Reports would be tabled before the end of November each year and that the Presidency would ensure that the implementation of such increases would be effective as at 1 April of each year. Despite this undertaking, we are now almost at the end of June and we still have no idea what is happening with salary increases for this year. I appeal to the President, on behalf of the members, to please look at this matter urgently and to see to it that something is done, because this affects all members of this House.

Having duly stuck my neck out as expected, let me return to the matter under discussion. In the year that we are celebrating our first decade of democracy, the Budget Vote for the President’s Office affords us an excellent opportunity to appraise the institution of the Presidency itself. One must be generously spirited in acknowledging that the ruling party’s success in garnering just short of 70% of the vote in the April elections was also very much a personal achievement for the President himself. This achievement also imbues our President with the grave responsibility of ensuring that the Presidency is alert and sensitive to the essential checks and balances of a democratic and free society. Paradoxically, I believe the touchstone of the success of the Presidency over the next five years will be the extent to which the President will be willing to relinquish power and devolve decision-making.

There is clear water between the President’s and the IFP’s vision of society. We believe that decision-making should be taken to the point closest to the community and individual as is practically possible. In our competing vision, we place the individual and the community at the heart of society, not Government. The President and the ruling party’s instinct, on the other hand, is to grasp all power at the centre and impose decisions in a top-down manner, effectively tying each mayor to the President.

It is my fervent conviction that if the Presidency is to succeed in fulfilling the noble ambition of turning back the frontiers of poverty and closing the gap between the first and second economies, the President will need to draw upon the contributions of all political parties in this House and on that broad and rich constellation of groups known as civil society.

One of the primary roles of the Presidency is policy co-ordination, which affects the lives of all ordinary South Africans. I hope the President will be able to rise above party politics and have the courage to heed advice from other political parties, politics for they represent constituencies that did not vote for the ruling party but who are as patriotically South African as those people who did. And, after all, the two largest opposition parties do not participate in the executive. Such constructive engagement can only serve to deepen democracy, promote nonracialism and enrich the process of creating cogent and workable solutions to our nation’s challenges and maladies. The Presidency should welcome principled and constructive opposition and not caricature it as a camouflage for racism and the protection of elite interests.

As a moral and constructive opposition party, we would appeal to the President to seek to accommodate the views of all opposition parties in finding common solutions to the problems we as a nation face at home and abroad: the Aids pandemic; the widening inequality gap; endemic poverty which is most acute in the rural areas; the rooting out of corruption; the unabating wave of crime; and the continuing unfolding economic and social crisis in Zimbabwe.

I appeal to the President to use the prestige and authority of the Presidency to work unceasingly to break down notions of them and us between HIV-positive and noninfected people, to raise awareness about the disease and to end the equivocation and malaise which has characterised the Presidency’s approach to dealing with HIV/Aids. The Presidency must lead the Government’s efforts boldly from the front so as to bridge the gap between policy and the implementation of a comprehensive plan to treat HIV/Aids. In the fight against poverty, the Presidency has a huge role to play in promoting an economic vision that empowers the poor and marginalised by drawing them into the mainstream of economic opportunity.

The Child’s Rights Organisation tells us that many children live in conditions in which their rights are threatened. This is a serious blemish on a civilised society. The promotion and protection of children’s rights fall within the ambit of policy co-ordination in the Presidency. Many children have been orphaned by Aids and many are even the sole breadwinners for their families. The Presidency must take the lead in defending the rights of children affected by Aids, particularly the girl- child.

In the formulation and implementation of our public policy, the Presidency must be especially vigilant to ensure that in South Africa we avoid a process of elite transition in which we merely exchange yesterday’s bitter politics of racial superiority with the equally cruel politics of the haves and have-nots. Left unchecked, unfulfilled expectations could have the explosive cauldron effect of ripping apart the seams of national unity and reconciliation that we have all strived to strengthen over the past decade. Turning to the arena of foreign policy, in view of the Presidency’s significant involvement in Nepad, there is much we can contribute with our experience in conflict resolution, I believe, to resolving conflicts in Africa and further away, such as the Middle East.

One of the lessons of the 20th century must be that no country can keep the world out. Our foreign policy must be consistent and ethical. We must always stand up to bullies, irrespective of any past or present bonds of friendship. This Presidency is better placed than other chancery in the world to hold the government of Zimbabwe to account for human rights abuses and for the deterioration and the undermining of the legal and democratic institutions there.

Former US President Harry Truman once famously described the presidency as a ``bully pulpit’’. The IFP hopes that the President will take the opportunity of using the Office of the Presidency to be a force for unity, to take the moral lead, and to provide uncluttered, visionary leadership in our beloved nation and on our continent.

The IFP supports the Presidency Budget Vote.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Madam Speaker, hon President of the Republic, hon Minister and Deputy Ministers, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to have this opportunity of sharing with you our activities in line with the Programme of Action outlined by the President in the state of the nation address. Ministers have over the last few weeks indeed outlined in their respective Budget Votes the activities of the various departments aimed at advancing the fight against poverty and expanding access to a better life. These have clearly indicated the commitment of this Government to meeting the needs of the people.

Let me take advantage of this being youth month and begin by saluting our youth and acknowledging their contribution to the struggle for freedom in our country. The youth are our future and youth development continues to be one of our priorities. The Minister in the Presidency, who bears responsibility for youth development, will expand on our activities in this regard.

We see nation-building as continuing to be a key priority in this second decade of freedom. Our people, united in diversity, need to work together in a people’s contract to create work and fight poverty. While working for national unity, we by no means seek to suppress the unique diversity that makes South Africa a world in one country. Members are aware of the establishment of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, which is set to begin its work in earnest this year. Let us as religious, cultural and linguistic groups, use this commission to contribute our uniqueness as we build a better life for all.

Another key aspect of nation-building and the encouragement of diversity is the promotion of multilingualism, especially ensuring the greater use of indigenous languages to promote their growth and development.

Somlomo, namalungu ahloniphekile esishayamthhetho sikazwelonke, kuyancomeka ukuthi izilimi eziningi seziyakhulunya ngisho nalapha endlini yesishayamthetho sikazwelonke.

Kuyinjabulo kakhulu ngoba ngesikhathi sobandlulo lezi zilimi zazishaywe indiva, zibukelwa phansi. Kuyakhombisa-ke manje ukuthi umbuso wentando yeningi nenkululeko, sekulethe izinguquko eziningi.

Abuntu sebeyakwazi manje ukusho okusemicabangweni yabo ngokungazenyezi. Lokhu kuyinto ebaluleke kakhulu ekwakhiweni kwesizwe, nasekubuyiseni isimo sokuzethemba ebantwini bakithi.

Okunye okubalulekile Somlomo, ezinguqukweni ezilethwe yinkululeko, ukubyiswa kwesithunzi samakhosi endabuko sibuyiswa yilo Hulumeni wentando yeningi.

Siyakhumbula sonke ukuthi amakhosi ayephucwe namandla okwenza izinto ezithile ngesikhathi sobandlululo, ephetwe yizimantshi. Lo mthetho omusha oshaywe yilesi sishayamthetho usukubeke kwacaca ukuthi yikliphi iqhaza elizobanjwa amakhosi kulombuso wentando yeningi.

Indlela amakhosi azosebenzisana ngayo noHulumeni isicaciswe kabanzi kulo mthetho. Kuningi esikubona kufanele amakhosi abambe kukho iqhaza, ikakhulukazi emkhankasweni wokubuyisa ubuntu nezimilo emphakathini. Amakhosi angasisiza isizwe ekukhumbuzeni abantu amasiko agcizelela ubunt, ukuze kunciphe ubunswelaboya.

Kanti nasemikhakheni yezolimo, nokuthuthukiswa kwezindawo zasemakhaya, kanye nokufakwa kwezingqalasizinda nokunye, kufanele kuqiniswe ubudlelwane nokokusebenzisana phakathi kwamakhosi noHulumenio basemkhaya, njengoba sekwenzeka nje kwezinye izindawo. (Translation of Zulu paragraphs follows.)

[Madam Speaker, hon members of the National Assembly, it is appreciated that most of the languages are now being used, even in this House, the National Assembly.

It is really a great pleasure, especially because these languages were rejected and looked down upon during the apartheid era. It is now evident that democracy and freedom have brought about quite a number of changes.

People are now able to say what is on their minds with confidence. This is very important for nation-building and moral regeneration among our people. Another important issue, Madam Speaker, arising from the changes that have been brought about by democracy, was the recognition of the authority of traditional leader which was brought back by this democratic government.

We all know that during the apartheid era traditional leaders were deprived of authority to perform certain administrative acts and were under magisterial authority. This new legislation passed by this National Assembly makes clear provision as to what role the traditional leaders can play in this democratic government. The manner in which the traditional leaders shall work together with the government has been clearly outlined in detail in this legislation.

There are so many ways in which we feel the traditional leaders should play a role in our communities, particularly in the moral regeneration campaign. Traditional leaders can help the nation by reminding the people about cultural codes that place emphasis on ubuntu, so that crime is reduced, as well as in agricultural activities, the development of rural areas, the establishment of infrastructure, and so on. Relations and the spirit of working together should be strengthened between traditional leaders and local governments, as is happening in other places.]

Madam Speaker, we are pleased that the moral regeneration programme has continued to take root in communities. Hon members would be aware of the success of the many campaigns undertaken by Government and communities, encouraging awareness and action against scourges such as domestic violence, child abuse as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The success of campaigns such as the 16 Days of Activism on No Violence against Women and Children, and others such as Child Protection Week, result from the strong partnership between Government and communities in preventing and fighting criminality.

We thank all members of this House who are active in their constituencies during such campaigns. Let us do more, especially during this year, which is international year of the family. But let me emphasise that the moral regeneration programme is not only about campaigns against negative behaviour. It is also about promoting positive values such as ubuntu and compassion, and respect for human dignity and human life and all other values enshrined in our Constitution. Therefore, all of us have a role to play in our communities to mobilise and promote these values in various activities.

In this regard, allow me to use this opportunity to pay tribute to one of our foremost nation-builders, the former editor-in-chief of the Sowetan, Aggrey Klaaste, who died at the weekend. [Applause] His contribution to social development and to building a compassionate society will never be forgotten. He was not just a spectator and reporter of events; he was a catalyst for change.

Hon members, as we all know, the then Deputy President Mbeki launched the Partnership against AIDS in 1998, emphasising partnerships in care and support for the infected and affected. In addition to many Government programmes, many resources have been pooled from diverse communities and social groupings to ensure a strong, united and comprehensive response to this epidemic. This partnership is expressed and co-ordinated through the South African National Aids Council.

We will continue to encourage all sectors and spheres of society to be involved as equal partners in developing programmes, and in sharing information and research that will curb the spread of this disease. We must also develop more support networks for those already infected and affected by the disease.

Hon members, the building of a better Africa and a better world has always been a strong mission of our Government. We will continue our interactions on a bilateral and multilateral level with various countries and international institutions to promote our national objectives. Next week we will host the second meeting of the South Africa-People’s China Binational Commission. We will seek to further expand bilateral relations with China in the political, economic, technological, cultural, educational and scientific fields. South Africa is China’s largest trading partner in Africa. As China is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, we anticipate that the binational commission will assist in further improving trade between our two countries. The bilateral trade volume has already increased from R9,3 billion in 1990 to R23,3 billion in 2003.

We also have binational commissions with Nigeria, Sweden and Germany, and all these provide a focused mechanism for deepening ties and meeting objectives such as expanding trade relations in order to meet the national priority and the creation of jobs. We have binational commissions with other countries as well.

We are also continuing with conflict resolution in the Great Lakes region, including Burundi, where elections need to take place before 1 November 2004, in terms of the Arusha agreement. The Great Lakes region has approved a timetable and we are working closely with the Barundi to ensure adherence to the deadlines. The priorities in the next few weeks include the establishment of an independent electoral commission and the passing of the necessary electoral legislation.

Also in terms of the Arusha agreement, we are assisting the Burundi parties to finalise a post-election power-sharing arrangement, which we call a soft landing option, which would take into account both the aspirations of the majority as well as the fears of the minority.

We spent two days in Burundi last week, and met with 30 political parties and representatives of civil society to discuss post-election power- sharing and the peace process in general. On Monday this week, in Pretoria, we also received a delegation from the All Africa Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches and the Fellowship of Christian Councils in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, to discuss the Burundi peace process.

With regard to preparing for security conditions, hon members will also be aware of the deployment of the United Nations peacekeeping mission from 1 June to replace the African mission in Burundi. As members will recall, when the UN Security Council indicated in 2002 that conditions were not conducive for the deployment of the UN’s force, as the cease-fire agreements did not meet all the UN requirements, the AU decided to deploy the African mission to which South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia contributed troops. As we welcome the UN deployment, we also commend the African mission in Burundi, the first ever peacekeeping mission deployed by the AU. It was a key innovation on the continent and it is now a good model for future AU peacekeeping missions.

Allow me to thank all hon members who continue to support the key role that our country is playing in peacekeeping and peacemaking on the continent. South Africa is presently listed as the 10th largest troop- contributing country to the United Nations. This is a remarkable achievement, bearing in mind that the country only became directly involved in the UN peacekeeping operations from 2001. This indicates the total commitment of South Africa to peace and stability on the continent and in the world.

Our country continues to provide hope on the continent, especially in the search for peace. We recall that during the two presentations to the United Nations Security Council for the deployment of a peacekeeping mission in Burundi, in 2002 and 2003, council members unanimously emphasised the importance that South Africa is playing in the continent. This view has been expressed in many other forums.

Malunga ahloniphekile esiShayamthetho sikaZwelonke, angigcizelele ukuthi njengoba sithumele amabutho kula mazwe anjengoBurundi noDRC, senziwa ukwazi ukuthi angeke sithuthuke futhi sijabule sodwa ungunaphakade kube kudlange izimpi nokwentula emazweni angomakhelwane bethu. [Ihlombe.] Kuyayisiza iNingizimu Afrika ukusebenzela ukuthula ukuze sandise amazwe esingahwebelana nawo futhi sithuthukise unmotho wezwe lethu kanye nowezwekazi lase-Afrika. Sizimisele ukusebenzela ukuthula e-Afrika kuze kungabi bikho ama-Afrika ayophila ngosizi, ngokweswela nangokwesaba. (Translation of isiZulu paragraph follows.)

[Hon members of the National Assembly, let me emphasise the fact that we have sent troops to countries like Burundi and the DRC because we know that we will never develop and be happy forever all by ourselves while wars and poverty are prevalent in our neighbouring states. [Applause.] It helps South Africa to work for peace so that we increase the number of countries we can trade with while developing the economy of our country and of Africa as a whole. We are prepared to work for peace in Africa so that no Africans live in poverty and fear.]

Taking Government to the people through izimbizo and other public participation programmes is set to continue. Accessibility and the capacity to listen and respond to the people will continue to be a key priority of this Government. Last year a number of izimbizo were undertaken. Follow-ups conducted after those visits indicate the success of this programme.

For example, in 2001 we visited the Free State, and in November last year we returned to assess progress. As regards agriculture, a request for the speeding up of land claims had been made in 2001. By the time of the follow-up visit, 18 farms had been allocated to the previously disadvantaged families through grants obtained from Government. On the question of access to services, the people of Trompsburg and Zastron had, in 2001, complained about having to travel to Bloemfontein to obtain identity and other civic documents. As we speak, multipurpose community centres are under construction in two areas to resolve the problem. [Applause.] The people of Trompsburg had also requested sport and recreation facilities, and these were built by Government at a cost of R4 million.

In Limpopo, following complaints from the people during izimbizo last year, the provincial government set aside over R30 million to demolish and rebuild all school premises built with asbestos in Mafefe village. [Applause.] These are just a few illustrations of how Government responds to issues raised during izimbizo. They indicate the value of izimbizo as a communication, monitoring and evaluation tool.

In this new term of government and new Parliament, as Leader of Government Business, let me acknowledge and welcome the existing co-operation between the executive and Parliament. We’ll play our part to contribute to the efficient functioning of Parliament through, among other things, ensuring a smooth flow of legislation. In the previous Parliament, we succeeded in ensuring that a large number of Bills did not have to be fast-tracked and that Parliament had sufficient time to properly consider the Bills before it. Once again, thank you for this opportunity of sharing information on our activities. We hope for a continued positive working relationship between the executive and Parliament for the common good of our country. In conclusion, let me take this opportunity to thank our President for inculcating in the Presidency and Government the culture of hard work, and indeed for providing effective leadership. [Applause.] I’d also like to thank the Minister in the Presidency who has been a pillar of support to all of us; our Director-General, Rev Frank Chikane and all Presidency staff for their hard work and much-valued support to all of us. Allow me to join the President in extending our heartfelt condolences to Rev Chikane and his family on the passing away of his mother. Thank you very much. [Applause.]

Mr M STEPHENS: Madam Speaker, His Excellency the President, hon Deputy President and hon members, we find ourselves in agreement with the hon Deputy Minister, because we too strive for a strong and prosperous Africa, and South Africa is the economic engine room of Africa. The first step in creating a strong Africa is to make South Africa strong and prosperous.

Since the start of this third Parliament, we have witnessed Government’s grand plan taking shape. The hon President has led from the front in order to put in place an overall policy thrust with a great deal of potential. On various fronts strategy, legislation and budgets are taking shape to address economic and social issues, issues that the UDM has also been campaigning for.

It appears to us that Government, under the direct leadership of the hon President, is moving in the right direction. Naturally, we do not agree with every single initiative in its detail, and we have raised our reservations and counterproposals during the various Budget Vote debates. We sincerely trust that the outcomes of the policies that have been put in place will be as positive as the intentions expressed.

Today I would like to raise three issues, which we believe require attention in order to allow Government’s overall strategy to succeed in delivering social and economic prosperity for all. The three make-or-break issues are, firstly, the volatility of our currency, secondly, the inflationary environment, in third place, the impact of HIV/Aids. Many factors contribute to the state of each of these issues. However, we would like to suggest that above and beyond the various Government strategies already in place, a single additional policy intervention in each case could vastly enhance the success of Government’s overall strategy. Firstly, the volatility of the rand remains a central factor in dampening economic growth and, hence, job creation. The rand’s volatility creates uncertainty amongst domestic and foreign investors and encourages short- term rather than long-term investment. Whenever the currency weakens it stimulates exports, but inflationary pressure is applied to various sectors of the economy which, in one fell swoop, increases the price of commodities and imported goods. When the rand strengthens, it inhibits exports, decreases earnings and threatens jobs. This volatility is costing the country dearly, because it keeps the country in a lose-lose situation. Whatever the currency does, we lose.

Perhaps the single biggest factor leading to this currency volatility is the interest rate differential. The fact that the differential in terms of the interest rates of our major trading partners is in the region of 5% to 7% means that our currency will continue to attract so-called ``hot money’’. We make ourselves a target for speculative cash flows.

To benefit from the high interest rate differentials, speculators temporarily ``park’’ money in South Africa awaiting favourable investment opportunities elsewhere. When those opportunities arise, these speculators disinvest and cause huge currency outflows. The single policy intervention that we would urge Government to consider is to reduce this differential by pursuing interest rates down to at least neutral levels.

Secondly, the inflationary environment is a factor that hampers economic growth and threatens to disrupt various job creation initiatives. Again, it is worth noting that Government has committed itself to a number of strategies to combat inflation. The UDM will definitely monitor the success of Government to keep administered prices below inflation levels, to mention only one commendable effort.

One factor that contributes significantly to the inflationary environment is the cost of fuel. Transport expenditure is an important segment of most household budgets. Given the economy’s dependence on road freight, the price of fuel inevitably determines the price of all goods that need to be transported between suppliers, wholesalers, manufacturers and the consumer. I have already referred to administered prices and to currency volatility. These all have an impact on the fuel price.

However, we would like to propose that the Government seriously and urgently investigate the viability of entering into one or more crude-oil swap arrangements with friendly supplier countries. Oil swaps are well- known arrangements throughout the world and they serve to fix the price of oil for both the suppliers and the purchasers for an agreed period.

Since the Opec target price for oil is between $23 and $28 per barrel, we should be able to negotiate a swap within that price range. If a substantial portion of our annual oil requirements were fixed in this way, the volatility of our price of fuel would be severely dampened and stabilised. Low-price volatility should be our target at this juncture. This arrangement will buffer the economy against the inflationary impact of fuel price volatility. I believe that there are a number of crude-oil- producing countries that we have friendly diplomatic relationships with. So negotiating a favourable swap arrangement should, in essence, be possible.

Thirdly, HIV/Aids is a disease burden that is doing untold economic and social damage to our country. For instance, it is estimated that currently 18% of a working South African’s life is spent sick. That figure will only increase in the next few years as the pandemic spreads. The cost of health care is spiralling, productivity will fall, and the youth and those in the economically active age group are hardest hit. Social assistance expenditure by Government will increasingly be absorbed by the disease. Poverty will increase as a direct result of HIV/Aids.

Once again we acknowledge that various Government responses are under way to deal with the problem. We would have hoped that some of these could have happened earlier, but the fact is that things are finally beginning to happen. The single additional policy intervention we would like to propose is that Government make HIV/Aids a notifiable disease.

The success of any strategy to deal with the pandemic is directly linked to the surveillance capacity of the Government. Without proper and accurate surveillance, it is impossible to determine whether responses to the disease are appropriate and whether they are succeeding, or when and where strategies need to be amended. [Time expired.] [Applause.]

Mrs P DE LILLE: Chairperson, I promise I will not call you Madam Speaker. Mr President, Mr Deputy President, the ID is the only independent voice in this country. [Laughter.] This was confirmed in April of 2004, and we will execute our mandate without fear or favour. We also remain the only political party with a nonracial message of opposition politics, which is protransformation and building a new South Africa.

There are several coalitions in this House. On the one hand there is the coalition here for disappearance after 90 years, and, on the other hand, we have a coalition for change, or is it a coalition for fear? I don’t know. [Laughter.] We are interested in finding out what this coalition stands for, because it seems this coalition only comes together when they fear that they have been excluded from positions of power. [Laughter.]

I will only focus only on a few key issues today that I think are integral to the operations of the Presidency. One of them is poverty. While each Government department has its own poverty alleviation budget, these programmes must be aligned more tightly to ensure effectiveness. We welcome the closer monitoring that the President has now announced today, and we also look forward to fulfilling our function of watching it very closely. We support the latest Human Rights Commission report, which recommends that child support grants be extended from 14 to 18 years. Government is under obligation in terms of section 28 of the Constitution to provide second-generation human rights and socioeconomic rights to children, and we think that this obligation must be fulfilled.

It has also been proven all over the world that when a government finds ways to stimulate the SMME sector, there is a significant reduction in unemployment. Therefore job creation in the informal sector must be a priority.

With regard to our youth, the majority of the unemployed today are the youth of our country, and therefore policy interventions directed at them must be strengthened and linked to broader employment initiatives. The performance to date of the National Youth Commission and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund is disappointing. These programmes stand to benefit the most from efficient and independent monitoring to gauge their effectiveness and justify the increase in their budgets.

Our education system must be designed to deliver the skills required for our economy. There is currently a mismatch that needs to be corrected. There should be a demand-driven approach to skills development between the Sector Education and Training Authorities and the industries for which they have been created.

Regarding HIV/Aids, the current roll-out rate of antiretrovirals will not achieve your 1,4 million ARVs by 2008. There isn’t any more time for philosophical and intellectual debates around HIV/Aids or grandstanding. What is needed is a strong political will to make high-impact and cost- effective interventions. It is the role and responsibility of everyone in this country to stand up and do something about HIV and Aids. For Government to achieve its target by 2008, it is important that it partner with NGOs, the private sector and also civil society as a whole. The fact is that Government can never do it alone.

All pandemics such as polio and smallpox have been contained by vaccine intervention. We must therefore make more resources available for the HIV/Aids vaccine initiative. For this, we should commend the SA Vaccine Initiative. But it is also quite embarrassing, Mr President, that when I attend international Aids conferences we are always confronted by different presentations by South African organisations. We hope this year, when we go to Bangkok, that we will be able for the first time in the history of the Aids conference to present a unified country position.

We also accept that the growth rate in the President’s budget of 10,4% over the medium-term is sufficient to cope with your increasing leadership role on the continent and the implementation of domestic policy and service delivery.

The restructuring of the Presidency is critical to ensure proper co- ordination and implementation of policy. We therefore welcome the appointment of the Chief Operations Officer in the Presidency in order to fast-track delivery.

We also heard from inside your camp, Mr President, that you are cracking the whip on your Ministers and not letting them get away with nonperformance. You are correct in this approach, because they must work in order to come back in 2009. The question is, Mr President, how can I help you in this task, because I am sure I can shout louder than you? [Laughter.]

In terms of the restructuring of local government, we agree with the steps that are being implemented, because it is at this level where the face of poverty is most obvious. The equitable share allocation is imperative if the President wants to stand out in the minds of South Africans in years to come for its achievements with regard to poverty elimination.

Instead of just being a bunch of reactionaries - they are not in the House

• who continually criticise policy without having credible alternatives, the ID is building a majority that is determined and dedicated to getting South Africa working. [Applause.] I am convinced, Mr President, that when you look back many years from now, you would like to be remembered for the goals that you intend achieving over the next five years. I thank you. [Applause.]

Mr G G OLIPHANT: Chairperson, hon President, Deputy President, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, hon members of Parliament, comrades, ladies and gentlemen, in this tenth year of freedom, we have collectively made tremendous progress to transform our country from apartheid to democracy. The ANC supports this Budget Vote, and the far-reaching Programme of Action outlined by the Presidency. It is appropriate that this Budget Vote debate takes place during this month of June, which is almost 50 years since the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955. It is also the twenty- eighth anniversary of our gallant youth struggles of 1976. This causes us to reflect on the type of society the Freedom Charter envisaged and for which our youth laid down their lives.

We also wish to recognise the contributions and sacrifices made by South African workers under the banner of Cosatu and its former allies in the UDF during the mid-1980s. The working people and the poor need to be seen to be the major beneficiaries of the fruits of liberty for which they fought and died. This needs to be the main yardstick by which we measure progress. According to the 2003-2004 South African Year Book, significant economic achievements have been recorded since 1994, including macroeconomic stabilisation, a profound restructuring of the real economy and substantive export success. Since 1994, for the first time over two decades, South Africa experienced positive growth. However, what remains is the critical challenge of strengthening the link between economic growth and export success with employment creation, poverty alleviation and a marked reduction in inequality. These are challenges that the ANC took very seriously when it entered into a people’s contract with South Africa to create work and fight poverty.

Comrade President, we are further encouraged by your leadership together with other African leaders and heads of states, in the G8 Summit process. During the past weekend you continued to engage the international community about the problems of South Africa, this region and our continent. Business Day of Monday, 21 June 2004 reported as follows:

The International Investment Council, composed of business leaders who manage multinational companies in various industries, has given its vote of confidence on the stability of economic conditions in South Africa. The Council believes that this will help the country to realize real growth for the first time in 10 years. This was also evident in the decision of the International Monitory Council to host this international conference in South Africa, the first it meets in Africa, in 2007.

These are important achievements for our economy, coupled with our celebrated victory to host the Soccer World Cup in 2010.

The next decade of democratic rule in South Africa poses many critical challenges to grow the economy, increase investment in our local economy and to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014. In the discussion document entitled ``Towards a Ten-Year Review’’, the following captures the enormity of the challenges ahead:

The advances made in the first decade by far supersede the weaknesses. Yet if all indicators were to continue along the same trajectory, especially in respect of the dynamics of economic inclusion and exclusion, we could soon reach a point where the negative starts to overwhelm the positive.

The ANC Government does not have the luxury to state the problems only, but has the responsibility to work tirelessly together with patriotic stakeholders in the economy to find workable solutions.

A critical part of this challenge must be to address the plight of our African youth and rural people. They are the hardest hit by unemployment and poverty. Young people under 30 years faced an unemployment rate of 47% in 2001 and constituted 70% of all unemployed people, as reported by Stats SA in 2002. These problems are obviously easy to state but difficult to resolve. Ours is an integrated and comprehensive strategy to fight poverty and create work. The President, in this Parliament and elsewhere, has clearly stated the long-standing challenge of dualism in our economy, which was entrenched by many decades of colonialism and apartheid. There are no automatic benefits from the first economy to the second economy.

Therefore, Government has mobilised social partners to the creation of jobs and sustainable livelihoods, on a new growth path. We further wish to acknowledge the important role played by Nedlac in facilitating social dialogue on critical issues facing South Africa. Nedlac enriches our participatory democracy on key socioeconomic issues, and has been recognised by the International Labour Organisation as a pioneering institution.

The five sectors that are critical in mobilising resources to contribute to our economic turnaround are: state through fiscal policy; parastatals through their investment and restructuring potential; retirement funds and life insurers with the agreement to invest 5% of income into productive projects; the social and co-operative sector; and the private sector. The private sector alone commands the bulk of investable capital and is expected to show more confidence in our domestic economy by investing even more into our people, plant equipment and infrastructure. However, we note with concern the massive disinvestments and delistings from the local economy and off-shore listings and foreign beneficiation of our raw materials by South African companies such as De Beers, Anglo American, Sasol, Old Mutual, SAB Miller and Billiton.

International experience clearly shows that real foreign direct investment follows large-scale domestic investment. Domestic corporations need to demonstrate their commitment to our economy in a meaningful way. We welcome interventions such as the Expanded Public Works Programme, learnerships and other projects that were announced by respective Ministers in their various Budget speeches. Our determination to fight poverty, create jobs and grow the economy is unstoppable. The Presidential Jobs Summit convened by our former President, Comrade Nelson Mandela in 1998 laid a solid foundation to deal with problems of unemployment and poverty. That summit and the Growth and Development Summit are mutually reinforcing agreements.

Our Proudly South African campaign is doing very well and needs to be supported and encouraged at all levels. For instance, South Africa cannot continue to import toilet paper, tinned tomatoes and condoms, which could surely be produced locally and competitively. We also need to ensure that we use South African goods and services as far as humanly possible, in our preparations for 2010 and beyond. We need to host a Proudly South African World Cup.

The Democratic Alliance, in their empty benches, until today have raised one issue and one issue only, namely labour market flexibility to deal with economic growth, poverty and unemployment. What they have essentially been advocating for ten years now, is to scrap the labour laws and give employers the right to hire and fire at will. That will not happen, Mr Lowe. It will not happen as you said today, Mr Leon. [Interjections.] If it is so, then they should tell us what the other rubbish is. All important stakeholders, except you yourself, agree that ours is a complex problem that needs sustainable solutions. They continuously fail to understand the structural nature of unemployment and the collapsing demand for unskilled workers in our economy. One day you’ll learn. [Interjections.] Yes, I still belong here.

Let me end for the benefit of my friends in the DA by reading a quotation from the speech of the President at the Millennium Labour Council in July

1. He quoted one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century who stated that: I see a great nation upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its people are at peace among themselves, they are making their country a good neighbour amongst nations. I see a country, which can demonstrate that under democratic methods of government national wealth can be translated into spreading volumes of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the levels of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy. In this nation I see tens of millions of citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today can call necessities of life. I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meagre that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labelled indecent by so- called polite societies, half a century ago.

[Time expired.][Applause.]

Mr C B HERANDIEN: Mr Chairman, hon President, hon Deputy President, members of the Cabinet, ladies and gentlemen, from the outset I want to emphasise that the New National Party will support this budget. But, Mr Chairman, allow me to remind the hon member of the ID just for the record that, in a democracy where nation-building is of the utmost importance, I don’t think she - and I can give her a signed letter to that effect - and her party will last ninety years.

Hon President, when you opened Parliament in 2001, there was an outcry from all quarters that you had no vision, that you could not unite the people of South Africa, and specifically they stated and claimed that you said nothing new. Your 43 objectives at that stage placed the emphasis on the economy. But although very few people understood the importance of your speech at the time, the significance became clear 3 years later, with the elections earlier this year.

In your address after your inauguration in May, you came up with key deliverables, and specific timeframes. Twenty-eight of these were aimed at the first economy. The three most important ones are the undertaking that by the end of this year, no child will be taught under a tree; within five years everybody will have clean dinking water; and especially within eight years, everybody will have electricity. Mr President, that is laudable, and I’m sure that you and your Cabinet are fully geared to reach these targets.

We achieved our freedom from apartheid and now we need to join hands to obtain our economic freedom. We cannot afford the luxury of having a nation of a few super rich, as opposed to the masses of the poor. Poverty has no barriers of colour, religion, race or sex. We are all proud South Africans and must, as a nation, continue to foster the miracle that happened in 1994, a miracle that the world can see is everlasting. You took opposition parties by surprise. They now all agree that you have a very good declaration of intent, but as usual they doubt whether it is attainable. I’m sure that opposition politics will find it extremely difficult in future. If they want to fulfil their role as watchdog over the Government, they should first try to understand the politics of poverty and especially the politics of economic emancipation. [Applause.]

The President kept his word and the people in the community are very glad that already they clamped down on certain drug dealers as he promised in his state of the nation address. Two hundred of them are well known. The people out there applaud you. Seeing that the hon Mr Ellis was making a few snide remarks, as usual his leader could not resist to make a snide remark about the former President F W de Klerk. It is well known that they refused to allow Mr de Klerk to address this Chamber with former President Nelson Mandela. [Interjections.]

But let me remind them as the DA that this friendship between the President and former President F W de Klerk is an open secret - there is nothing to hide. It would help them if they could come here and be transparent by telling us if they still have friendly ties with the infamous Jurgen Harksen. They should tell us what happened behind closed doors when they entered into secret deals with the liquidators of the Harksen estate. If that is transparency, and if that is the way we are going to conduct opposition politics in future, Mr President, then we might as well not have an opposition. I thank you. [Applause.]

Ms M R MORUTOA: Chairperson, hon President, hon Deputy President, hon Ministers, hon Deputy Ministers, hon members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, my speech is dedicated to those who made a difference in South Africa, struggling for the emancipation for women. These are the late Feronza Adams, the late Ntombi Shope and the late June Mlangeni. I will be speaking on the vision and programmes of the Office on the Status of Women.

The ANC National Executive Council in 1990 adopted a comprehensive statement on the emancipation of women in South Africa. Our definition of goals towards achieving gender equality are guided by our vision of human rights, which incorporates the acceptance of the equal and inalienable rights of men and women. This is a fundamental tenet of our Bill of Rights and Constitution. This vision of how the ANC had envisaged government to work is elaborated on in the National Gender Policy Framework. The ANC Women’s League played a pivotal role by leading the National Women’s Coalition in mobilising all women to fight against discrimination against woman.

The new democratic Government put in place a constitutional, legislative and institutional framework towards achieving a democratic, nonracial and nonsexist dispensation. We came up with a Constitution that guarantees equal rights for all South Africans and prohibits discrimination. The vision and mandate of the Office on the Status of Women, the OSW, is located in the office of the President. Its mandate is to support and monitor gender mainstreaming in Government departments. It has a vital role to play as the principle co-ordinating structure of the national machinery on gender equality. It is responsible for developing national gender plans, as well as the implementation of national strategies.

The Office on the Status of Women has compiled a National Policy Framework for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality, which outlines an integrated framework for gender mainstreaming. Its vision is as follows: to develop an environment that will guarantee gender equality, hereby empowering women to gain equal access to opportunities and resources that will enhance the quality of the lives of women. The principle mandate of the OSW is to ensure that Government lives up to its constitutional, political and international commitments by translating these into meaningful and measurable programmes, thereby making a nonsexist society a reality.

The key programme areas of the Office on the Status of Women are policy, gender mainstreaming, co-ordinating and planning, advocacy, liaison networking and capacity-building.

In 2003, the following initiatives were embarked upon. Firstly, gender mainstreaming. In collaboration with the Department of Local Government, an initiative was embarked upon to mainstream gender into poverty eradication programmes. In conjunction with the New Economic Partnership and Development secretariat of Nepad, a conference was hosted on ``Gender and Nepad’’ to look into the mainstreaming of gender into Nepad-related initiatives.

In collaboration with the national gender machinery, work has been done to mainstream gender into national priorities such as poverty eradication. Work has gone into implementing the National Co-ordination Framework. Pertaining to capacity-building, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, a training programme was completed in May 2003. A training manual was developed as a result of this process and was disseminated in July 2003. A lecture service programme has been implemented and lectures were held on Nepad and on 10 years of freedom.

The programme of the Office on the Status of Women during 2004 will hopefully also look at and focus on the following national priorities: poverty eradication; ensuring service delivery to women; HIV/Aids; job creation and the economic empowerment of women; skills development; and violence against women.

The budget of the Office on the Status of Women is located in the budget of the Presidency. The main appropriation to the Presidency increases from R149 million in the 2003-04 financial year, to R173 million in the 2004-05 Budget. This constitutes an increase of 15,6% in nominal terms. The Presidency has organised its expenditure into the following five programmes: administration; support services to the President and Deputy President; Cabinet office policy co-ordination; and the National Youth Commission. The budget for the Office on the Status of Women is located within the budget for policy co-ordination. The ANC definitely supports this Budget Vote.

As part of the ongoing project co-ordinated by the Presidency to assess the first 10 years of freedom, the Office on the Status of Women co- ordinated provincial conversations, which culminated in the national gathering in the Limpopo province. Women at these forums assessed the impact of freedom on their lives and planned for the next 10 years. The objectives of the conversations were to acknowledge the strides and measures that have been made to advance women’s equality, review the years of freedom and examine what it has meant for women, envision the next 10 years and ensure that future Government plans are informed by women and women’s experiences and concerns.

The understanding of many African women scholars, practitioners, decision- makers and activists across the continent is that women struggle to balance formal and substantive equality. Similarly, during the conversations, women agreed that whilst the Constitution embraces the hopes of generations of men and women, and whilst the overall legislative framework in South Africa empowers women, the challenge is to implement these laws and policies to ensure meaningful equality and protection of women’s freedoms. For instance, regarding the Maintenance Act it is important that we focus on the appointment of maintenance investigations, and regarding the Domestic Violence Act the focus should fall on the recruitment of SAPS staff.

Women’s participation in public life has increased dramatically since the 1994 elections. The ANC adopted a quota for its parliamentary list, and the political climate and active women’s movements in 1990s resulted in the substantial increase of women’s participation in public positions. The legislative programme and policies of the democratic Government have taken the specific concerns and experiences of women into consideration. Maybe in this Parliament we should come up with a mechanism where we can discuss with other parties how to comply with the quota system and come up with amicable solutions.

One of the core features of the apartheid system was the exclusion of black people from structural ownership of wealth and resources. Therefore, changing the structural ownership and control of the South African economy is one of the critical challenges of democracy. The core approach of the Government is to link the economic indicators to other critical social development and political aspects of South African life. In its economic policy, the ANC-led Government aims to redress poverty while creating a positive economic environment, which invigorates and stabilises economic development.

The Cedaw report of 1995 stated that 46% of South African women, 15 years old and older, were classified as economically active. The rate of the economically active African women who are unemployed has dropped from 47% in 1994 to 38%. Poverty eradication and ``a better life for all’’ is the overarching concern of the ANC-led Government and the people of South Africa.

The theme of the report focused on infrastructure, legislative or other, which enables effective participation of women in the economy. During the conversations in Limpopo, women explored advances made by women in this sector and addressed the measures in place and the barriers women continue to encounter in this sector in order to arrive at an enabling framework for women’s effective participation in the economy.

Regarding the theme of information, communication and technology, ICT, and its implications for women’s lives, women looked at ICT and how it can be utilised to advance women in the economy. Access to information and communications technology is crucial for women regarding job creation and increasing their knowledge base.

One of the enduring legacies of apartheid is the manner in which violence permeates all levels of society, geography, race and social status. [Time expired.] [Applause.]

Rev K R J MESHOE: Chairperson, hon President, on behalf of the ACDP I would like to start by conveying our most sincere condolences to the Director-General in the Office of the President, Rev Frank Chikane, and his family on the loss of their mother. May the Chikane family be comforted by the knowledge that their loved one is not lost, but is alive and well in the presence of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

The ACDP is concerned about a potential catastrophic war that is looming in the DRC. Urgent action has to be taken to avert that unwelcome war and avoid the loss of millions innocent lives. We believe President Mbeki has to lead this effort and build on the foundation Government laid in 2002, when a peace deal was broken in that area and agreements were signed in our country, leading to the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from the DRC. A mechanism must be found to ensure that peace agreements that are signed by warring parties become binding and lasting.

Four years are hardly over, and yet another potential war is looming. The DRC ambassador to South Africa has called on our Government to ask the Rwandan government to stop meddling in their affairs, as he believes that South Africa has a moral authority over Rwanda. It is this moral authority that our Government must guard at all costs, because influence is within this perceived moral authority. The ACDP believes that the keys to retaining this moral authority are objectivity and consistency. Our Government must remain neutral in all these conflicts in order to have the trust and ears of all neighbouring countries.

The first major challenge of our Government is to see to it that no other African leader is drawn into this conflict by taking sides with one country against the other. They must all be reminded that the creditability of the new African Union’s commitment to peace and stability is at stake and that their actions will be the determining factor. It was reported in the media that on 2 June President Kabila called for a general mobilisation of his people to fight Rwanda. If this is true, our Government must ask him to withdraw that statement, and to give peace mediation a chance, in spite of the fact that he might have uttered those words because he blames Rwanda for backing the dissident generals of the rally for the Congolese democracy, something that Rwanda denies.

President Mbeki, we still believe, must urge him to give peace a chance. Rwanda claims it has disarmed the dissident officers. If this then is true, they must be held accountable for their actions, and not allow Rwanda to be used as a springboard for attacking and destabilising neighbouring countries. There must be definite commitment from all concerned parties to have talks that will lead to lasting peace in the region. President Kabila must be asked not to be tempted to pursue the dissident officers who have retreated into Rwanda, as indeed Rwanda pursued the Interahamwe in the DRC, sparking the long, bloody war. Everything humanly possible must be done to avert another war in Africa.

The reports about South Africa being a destination country for trafficking persons, while also a source country and a transit country for women and children that are trafficked to other parts of the world, are disturbing to say the least. This should not be done in a country that claims to believe in women and children’s rights. The ACDP calls for urgent measures to be put in place to reverse this trend, and also for this Parliament to introduce the necessary legislation that will outlaw both prostitution and trafficking in women and children.

As the year 2004 have been declared the year of the family in Africa, this Government must be seen to be proactive in promoting the rights of families and family friendly legislation.

Lastly, the ACDP welcomes the fact that the President has acknowledged, after meeting his international advisory council, that more still needs to be done to promote small and medium enterprises. The ACDP believes that this crucial sector in economic development and job creation is not only stifled by laws, as the President indicated. The ACDP calls upon on the President to set up a Cabinet committee to look into how state payments for services rendered by SMMEs and BEE companies can be expedited. Many emerging businesses are ruined by departments’ late or nonpayment for services rendered. The President must also look at corruption in the state tender process, especially in provinces. [Time expired.]

Mr G P MNGOMEZULU: Chairperson, hon President, Deputy President, Ministers and Deputy Ministers, comrades and colleagues, in his book entitled Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire states the following:

  Yet it is, paradoxical though it may seem, precisely in the response
  of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture
  of love may be found. Whereas the violence of the oppressors
  prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the
  latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the
  right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanise others and violate
  their rights, they themselves become dehumanised. As the oppressed,
  fighting to be human, take away the oppressor's power to dominate
  and suppress, they restore to their oppressors the humanity they had
  lost in the exercise of oppression.

These profound words by Paulo Freire were given expression by our people when, through the TRC process, we witnessed miraculous healing, pain and uncontrollable grief. We witnessed the previously oppressed offered the gesture of love he referred to. But this was also made possible because our people understood that we fought an oppressive and unjust system and not the white people or individuals of the white community.

There are many reasons why the moral renewal of our society is important, but we should be guided by what the President referred to in his opening address to the third democratic Parliament, namely building a sense of unity, united action and a new patriotism. Linked to these are the issues and challenges we face with regard to racial and gender inequalities, proper care for children, the elderly and the disabled.

Apartheid has bred many things through its systematic oppression and dehumanisation of our people. The struggle in which we engaged for so long was the response to this oppression and whilst we have achieved a peaceful political transition and have managed to maintain it for the past ten years of our democracy, the legacy of apartheid will haunt us for a very long time.

A qualitative review is to be conducted by Government with a particular focus on the impact of socioeconomic transformation and how it relates to issues such as nonracialism, nonsexism, value systems, family structures, identity and moral regeneration. Many people working tirelessly in our communities are unsung heroes, trying to make a difference in the lives of the youth, the elderly and the disabled.

The overwhelming victory for the ANC in the recent national elections signalled an even greater challenge for us in the next ten years of our democracy. We spent the first ten years learning many things about governing, at the same time building a solid foundation to advance towards a better life for all our people. An element of building this better life for all is the issue of moral regeneration.

The legacy of apartheid is manifesting itself in many ugly ways and the opening up of our society is inviting all forms of sinister and antisocial activities. Primary among these is the problem of drug dealing and the resultant drug abuse. This problem is threatening our youth as the illegal drug business expands its tentacles and its market. This presents a particular challenge to us that starts in the home and spreads to our education system, law enforcement and civil society. Our people, knowledge, vigilance and exposure are the greatest enemies of immoral activities.

The commitment of our people to high moral values was characterised by their gallant struggle against apartheid. The goodwill of our people towards each other in search of common goals is also characterised by the spirit in which we entered negotiations that led to our first democratic elections. In spite of fierce opposition and rhetoric from some quarters that planned to derail this process, including the senseless assassination of Comrade Chris Hani, the advancement towards a peaceful political transition could not be halted.

Our people have shown through their history of struggle, having fought an immoral and unjust system, that they are prepared to struggle against the social ills that have befallen our communities. A major enemy of our people is poverty and unemployment that inevitably leads to crime and other antisocial behaviour. The people of South Africa liberated themselves and we have committed ourselves to the challenge of developing a caring society with a culture of human rights.

It was in this context that the ANC, in liberating the racially oppressed, created the space for our former oppressors to liberate themselves from their racial bigotry. This was and remains our historical duty. When the Moral Regeneration Movement was launched in April 2002, it was envisaged that the campaign would reach the farthest corners of our country and that it would be the responsibility of each and every South African to spread the message of moral renewal.

Government programmes are promoting a caring society through building stronger family structures and encouraging respect for the vulnerable. We need to support the campaigns and initiatives of many organisations of civil society, including sport and religion. If we are to succeed in this regard, we must at a political level display some measure of understanding and maturity of our role in society as politicians.

In the ANC Today of 16-22 April, the President of the ANC wrote the following:

  In their struggle against our movement, our political opponents make
  certain that they underplay our country's achievements. Unashamedly
  they pretend that these problems that are many centuries old could
  be solved in a mere 10 years, and that failure to solve them
  constitutes an unavoidable failure of our movement.

By now it is a well-known fact that the electorate overwhelmingly disagreed with this view.

I want to make it clear to those who are not aware that, whilst millions of our people may be poor and illiterate, this does not mean that they are unable to think and to reason and to make intelligent decisions for themselves - contrary to what a few may believe. The people understand that the problems we have inherited from apartheid and colonialism are immense and that the ANC-led Government has a mammoth task ahead of it to eradicate unemployment and poverty.

We have an important weapon, comrade Chairperson, which Maria Ramos, the CEO of Transnet, put as follows:

  The resilience of ordinary women, who against all odds raise
  children, hold families and communities together and generate so
  much energy, the generosity of our people, and our ability as a
  nation to overcome the inhumanity and cruelty of apartheid and focus
  on our common humanity. It is our people, our leaders and our
  ability to draw on a proud history of struggle that makes us unique.

It is ordinary people through their undying commitment to building a better South Africa for the future who are our biggest weapon in this fight against antisocial activities that pervade our society. This Government has a responsibility of ensuring that it fulfils its constitutional mandate and in this regard it has implemented many initiatives to fight corruption. In many respects South Africa leads the world in this regard. As the ANC we will always be guided by the Freedom Charter, a document of our people, recently adopted by the New National Party; a document considered subversive by its predecessor the National Party. We invite other parties to consider doing the same.

In conclusion, President Mbeki said in his state of the nation address on 8 February 2002:

  The issue of responsibility that each and all of us should take for
  our lives, moving from the understanding that, as we were our own
  liberators in resistance against apartheid, so too should we today
  act as our own liberators in dealing with its legacy.

We know that many have heeded this call by the President and are making a difference in the lives of many of our people.

Honourable President, this Budget Vote is in your honour, Sir, and enjoys the unqualified and unwavering support of the ANC. I thank you.

The MINISTER IN THE PRESIDENCY: Chairperson, President, Deputy President, hon members, since the debate on this Vote last year, a great deal has happened in South Africa. We have been celebrating and continue to celebrate the first decade of democracy and freedom in this land. Those celebrations went ahead with very wide support, barring the odd inappropriate note played in certain political quarters. It was highly pleasing to note the degree to which the citizens of a once-divided country banded together in the splendid way they did to mark a historic milestone in nationhood. This was a demonstration if ever we needed one, in a newly turbulent world, of how nations can settle their differences and concentrate on the things that unite them.

Another major event since we last considered this Vote was the general election. There have been winners and losers, but the real winner was South African democracy, on show again in an impressive exercise in a free and secret ballot - the third of its type since the dawn of democracy here in 1994. That is another thing to celebrate. Then also there was the triumph in Zürich where we were chosen as the host country for the Soccer World Cup in 2010. All South African hearts were beating as one over this

• another unifying event, another indication of our attractiveness as a nation of growing international choice. It underscored the realisation that our land is a haven of peace in the world and that we are tackling our problems in ways which make medium-range planning like this for complex massed world events a realistic proposition. The contrast with South Africa’s past generations of ostracism and racial tyranny is so great that it does not bear thinking about.

There will not be many reasonable people who would contest the view that our national fortunes are on the rise and that the goals we have set ourselves are steadily being reached. These thoughts have to be tempered by our acute awareness of the strides that still remain to be taken before we can really be comfortable with our national success. That state will come only when the poor are no longer poor, when the hungry are no longer hungry, when the homeless are housed, when the fearful and sick people of our land are secure and well. But no one should for a moment underestimate the urgency with which we face our challenges in line with the commitments made by our President and Government in recent months and years.

We are and must remain a nation with a sense of urgency. It must never be business as usual. It must be urgent business as usual all the way. We owe this not only to the living but to those who have passed on and who worked so hard for a nonracial, nonsexist, economically strong and caring South Africa. We must continue the fight for the human rights of women, the youth, the children and the disabled. It is on them that the most cruel blows of apartheid fell, particularly in rural areas officially designated as dumping grounds for human beings.

The manner in which women were treated in law and in practice under apartheid to this day manifests itself in a variety of ways, including higher levels of poverty - that’s asset and income - lower educational levels and overall lower quality of life than the rest of the population. It should be noted that the Government’s response to the plight of women, youth, disabled people and children over the past 10 years has been structured around specific principles. The key principles are empowerment, development and the meeting of basic needs; mainstreaming gender, disability and children’s issues; partnership between Government and civil society; equality and non-discrimination; self-representation; recognition of the right to equality in customary, cultural and religious practices; recognition of differences and inequalities among women; and entitlement to the right of integrity and security of the person.

In relation to youth development, nonetheless, the current situation is that the majority of women and persons with disabilities still live within the second economy. They are adversely affected by poverty, unemployment, lack of financial and capital resources and lack of technical and professional skills. Their household incomes are still low on average and their participation in the broader economy contributes a smaller percentage to the GDP of the country. The major challenge is to ensure that the labour market is able satisfactorily to absorb women and people with disabilities into meaningful and gainful employment and that they are thereby better positioned to take advantage of business opportunities as entrepreneurs.

In the past decade South Africa has been able to respond appropriately to international instruments that deal with gender, disability and children’s issues - GDC - ratifying the treaties and fashioning the internal policies, legislation and norms and standards on services in accordance with international frameworks. South Africa has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and is currently part of the preparatory process of providing input into the Disability Rights Convention through the UN ad-hoc committee. South Africa has been able to undertake exchange visits to create benchmarks to enable it to measure progress and assist in resource allocation. South Africa has also been able to sign a number of bilateral agreements with donor countries for specific projects on GDC issues.

The establishment of the three offices in the Presidency covering GDC, coupled with the projects they pursue, has put them at the cutting edge and placed them on the world map. A significant response with regard to policy includes the National Gender Policy, the National Integrated Disability Strategy and the National Youth Policy.

South Africa has also played a visible role in the international arena by hosting several conferences, seminars, and workshops which addressed issues affecting targeted groups throughout the world. In fact, other countries have been able to copy the South African model regarding targeted groups on specific projects, policies and regulatory frameworks. South Africa also chairs a number of international protocols relating to UN work in respect of GDC considerations.

There is no denying, however, that we need significantly to improve our participation in bi-national commissions and bi-lateral agreements and to accelerate the work around the international commitments we have made. Moreover there needs to be better co-ordination across Government departments to achieve better comprehensive and coherent coverage by programmes aimed at improving conditions of the target groups. We must measure and measure effectively our service delivery process. Better data is needed not only at the national, but also provincial and local levels.

Improving the performance of the state on GDC issues will be further enhanced through increasing Government’s expertise in these areas. Disabled persons, the youth, children and women constitute a significant proportion of the population directly impacted upon by the attitude, behaviour and performance of public servants. The same sense of urgency and preciseness that we adopt over GDC issues must apply to youth development, a major focus of Government effort. We have a range of programmes aimed at young people, but the challenge remains to ensure that young people are aware of this and also to build cohesion among these programmes.

The National Youth Service is ready for roll-out and in the spirit of the President’s most recent state of the nation speech, we have clear time frames for action. We envisage five thousand young people in accredited youth service programmes by the end of this year. The National Youth Service Unit to co-ordinate and be the administrative nerve centre will be launched during the first half of July 2004. This will include a campaign to bring in prospective young people to participate in the youth service. Around 16 June - Youth Day - there was a weeklong youth camp workshop to assist in registering young graduates to discuss seizing BEE opportunities, to focus on small enterprises and to set up support services for youth through the DTI.

I have already touched on the yearlong celebrations to mark 10 years of freedom and wish to elaborate briefly. A great deal of public participation has been built into the celebrations - business, civil society, trade unions, the Proudly South African campaign, International Marketing Council and so on. The logo is now widely used both domestically and internationally, though I would like to appeal to the media to use it more visibly and regularly. On 27 April we witnessed the hugely successful celebrations at the Union Buildings and the State Theatre with specially composed songs for the 10th anniversary as well as for President Mbeki. The re-elected President of South Africa was inaugurated on that day and it was deeply moving to see the spectacle on the ground and in the air on this occasion. The anniversary was celebrated not only at the Union Buildings, but also in all major capitals of the world.

On Youth Day, it will be recalled, there was a third national orders ceremony where new orders where awarded to honour, among others, epochal fighters against colonialism and apartheid on the continent and further afield. This was a recognition of the importance of the international solidarity, which secured our victory against apartheid. It points to the new responsibility we have as a nation in furthering international solidarity and internationalism to secure victory for the emancipation of Africa.

What lies ahead of us on the national calendar? Women’s month begins on 9th August. There will be a major women-only festival on that day in Mpumalanga. Women’s trains will run throughout the month and stop at various stations around the country with an exhibition and support services to the communities on how best to access social security, health services, access to small business, support services and so on. The month will culminate on 31 August with a thanksgiving service at the Union Buildings where the 1956 women’s pass protest took place

On 24 September - Heritage Day - there will be major celebrations in Kimberley, with as key focus our national symbols the flag and coat of arms, the anthem and national orders, etc.

On 2 October we shall mark National Children’s Day, and on 3 December the International Day of the Disabled and on 16 December we commemorate the Day of Reconciliation. The Decade of Freedom celebrations will culminate in the Western Cape in the opening of Parliament early in February 2005.

Let us by no means forget the different but inter-related commemorative dates that fall within the 16 Days campaign Against Violence Directed at Women and Children, which are: International Day for no Violence Against Women on 25 November; International Day for Those Living with HIV/Aids on 1 December; International Day for People Living with Disability on 3 December; and International Human Rights Day on 10 December.

As we focus on critical matters of human rights, let us look at how we have boosted the numbers of the previously marginalised in our National Assembly. I assume with confidence that we have proportionally more people with disabilities in our Parliament than any other country in the world. [Applause.] In fact, we have 16 members with disabilities. Now, please note the party breakdown is not without interest. I am going to read it very slowly. Out of the 16 ANC has 14, the IFP 1 and the ID 1. Shame on those who don’t even have one!

Now, a closing comment on the status of those who form the majority in most societies, and I think hon members will be particularly interested in the breakdowns I give. Again, I’m going to read them slowly. There were 131, that is 32.75% women in the National Assembly as at May 2004. In 2003 there were 31.3% women and in 1994 the figure was 25.4%. This shows an increase of 7.35%.

When we look at the party-political breakdown in 2004, it has emerged that the ANC has 106 women out of 279 seats, that is 38.4% [Applause.]; the DA 10 out of 56 seats, or 20%; the IFP 8 out of 28, that is 28.6%, the ID 2 out of 7, or 28.5%; the NNP 1 out of 7, that is 14.2%; the ACDP 1 out of 6, or 16.6%; the Freedom Front Plus 0 out of 4, the UCDP 0 out of 3, and the PAC 0 out of 3. Shame! Shame! [Laughter.]

There were 19, that is 35.18%, women in the NCOP as at May 2004. Of the 19 women in the NCOP, 12 are from the ANC, that is 63% of the total women in the NCOP [Applause.]; 1 from the IFP, that is 5.2%; 5 from the DA, that is 26.3% and 1 from the UDM, that is 5.2%. But I think we must take note, Comrade President, that the total percentage of women in the NCOP in 2003, though, was 37.9%. We have gone backward, although the ANC has gone forward.

We have 16 men and 12 women in the Cabinet - that is, 42.85% women membership. We have 11 male Deputy Ministers and 10 female Deputy Ministers - that is, 47.6% women. [Applause.]

Let us now bring into focus the coming local government elections and the need to see gender equity reflected at that level. At present, the figures show that out of 8 828 councillors, 6 263 are men and only 2 565 are women, a ratio of about 71% to 29%. I think all of us should agree that this is unacceptable. Of 284 mayors, 49 - about 17% - are women. About 29% of our Councils. Speakers are women. So, we have a lot of work to do.

In both the spheres of disability and women representation, the ANC, as you can see, is in the forefront, and I should like to appeal to all political parties to follow this example that the ANC has set.

Most of the areas I have mentioned in this address show progress, yes, but they also highlight the challenges that remain. Let us move on, not only in word but also in deed, to meet them.

In conclusion, let me thank and also extend my deepest sympathies to the Rev Chikane. But, I should like to thank the Rev Chikane, all the advisors and the officials who work in the Presidency. As you asked us, Mr President, to do more with less, even though we got an increase in the budget, we still have to do more with less.

Many thanks to the Deputy President for being there whenever we wanted him and for giving leadership, both as Leader of Government Business as well as leader of the ANC in Parliament. But above all, Comrade President, to you for your inspired as well as inspiring leadership. I must repeat what I have said elsewhere that it is under your leadership, Comrade President, that the ANC increased its vote in 1999 compared to 1994, that the ANC increased its vote in 2004 compared to 1999 and that the ANC in 2004, being the ruling party, made the major contribution to us winning the 2010 World Cup Bid. Thank you for your leadership, Mr President. [Applause.]

Dr P W A MULDER: Mr Chairman, if I had had time I would have liked to react to some of those things, but our time is very limited.

The world is busy reorganising itself into bigger and bigger trade blocs. The Asian trade bloc has a GDP per capita of US$13 000; the American trade bloc has a per capita income of $15 000; and the European trade bloc has a per capita income of $18 000. Africa is not part of any of these trade blocs. Where the GDP per capita in the European trade bloc was US$18 000 in 2000, the African GDP per capita for the same year was $300. That is $18 000 versus $300.

Meanwhile, we read about new conflicts in the DRC, new disagreements in Burundi and the crisis in Sudan. In my discussions with international journalists and businesspeople, I find more and more Afro-pessimism. It is important for the President to attend the G8 Conference, but President Mbeki is also right in that Africa will have to work out its own solutions to its problems. Europe or the United States will not solve our problems. Therefore, the FF+ supports the African Union and the Nepad initiatives. There are no alternatives.

A leader once said: ``It is the dreamers that move the world. Practical men are so busy being practical that they cannot see beyond their own lifetime. Dreamers and visionaries have made civilisations. It is trying to do the things that cannot be done that makes life worthwhile. The dream of today becomes the custom of tomorrow’’.

We may dream, but if we are not severely practical in our solutions, then we shall fail. Afrikaners are dreamers and are practical. South Africa has the best infrastructure in Africa, and Afrikaners played a major role in establishing that. I am proud of that achievement, but I never hear any positive comments on that in this House. For the success of Africa, the first step must be to improve Africa’s infrastructure.

South African companies will play a role in the deployment of the East African submarine cable system that will complete the cable loop around the continent. This will make fast modern communication between African countries possible, fostering trade on a continental basis.

In Europe, there is a well-developed telecommunications network that makes telephone and Internet communication possible. Africa is miles behind. However, today’s technology makes it possible to skip some of the phases of this development. Africa is skipping the fixed network phase. We are witnessing the world’s fastest cellular market growth in Africa. It is South African companies that opened up Tanzania, Nigeria and the DRC with mobile phones. One statistic is that in the first 100 years of fixed telephone communication in South Africa, four million phones were installed, and in the next 10 years of mobile phones 17 million people received mobile phones. I think upgrading Africa’s road network will stay a dream for many years if you have been in Africa, as I have. But the dream of linking Cape Town and Cairo by rail is practical and within our reach, and we also have the know-how to do it. I am aware of the Greater Inga Integrated Study on energy development, linking the Congo basin to Namibia. This is possible, it is within our reach and it can continue.

When I share these African dreams at a public meeting with an Afrikaans audience, they get exited because they know our fate is linked to Africa’s fate. But, then, they share their problems with me. They are not the elite Afrikaans speakers that send the President letters. They are the middle and working class; the voters that helped the FF+ increase our representation in this House. You dream about Africa they say, but we struggle to keep our schools Afrikaans under pressure from this provincial government.

In Gauteng, for example, 13 Afrikaans schools are now English-medium only, and there are eight in the Free State. Many more are on their way - first becoming parallel medium and then English only. They say you dream of Africa, but Mr Heinrich Augustyn, spokesperson for the Justice department, says the days of Afrikaans in our courts are numbered. You dream of Africa, but the ANC city council of Pretoria voted R450 000 to change the name of the city which is named after one of our Afrikaner heroes. You dream of Africa, but 31 community radio stations that used to broadcast Afrikaans and Christian programmes are no longer allowed to broadcast.

You dream of Africa, but our children are working in London because they could not get jobs in South Africa. Companies here blatantly told them that they had their letters, but that they should not apply again because they were white. When the Government speaks of Africans in diaspora, they ask me: Does that include our Afrikaner children in London with no other homeland, or is it racially defined and only for black people from Africa? I am not sure how to answer that.

In 1993 and 1996 we were forced to talk to each other about these problems. Now, elections and the style in this House force us to fight as opponents. It makes these problems worse and does not solve any of them. Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, said in Durban at the African Union conference in 2002: ``In Africa the rulers listen to the ruled and the majority to the minority. Our traditions teach us to respect each other, to give every man his say and every woman hers. Let’s resist the temptation of short cuts or solutions imposed by force’’.

The President spoke about minority rights and how to handle them. Let’s hope that what Kofi Annan said will be true in the future for South Africa as well, solving our problems together as Africans. Thank you. [Applause]

Mr D J SITHOLE: Chairperson, his Excellency the President, Deputy President, Ministers and hon members, in the past 10 years the ANC Government has transformed South Africa from international isolation to a country that has international responsibility and is a good world citizen. In doing so, we have had to demand extraordinary patience and wisdom from our leadership, so as to build a country that will, among other nations, be proud of itself.

In the past 10 years the ANC has had to persuade not only our internal skeptics but also the world about the need to work as a collective in resolving international challenges and problems. Good governance is not only applicable to nations states but also to international governments. Only those who believed that only they had a God-given right to whip the world into order as and when they deemed fit, had reason to resist any attempt to place the United Nations and other multilateral institutions at the centre of decision-making about our collective security.

When we declared the 21st century an African century, we did that because we believed in the ability of Africans to deal with their problems and find solutions to their challenges. We said this cognisant of the need to interact with the world in finding solutions to our complex problems.

It is this belief in us that has made the world respect South Africa. It is the leadership of the ANC Presidency that has steered the ship of South Africa’s international relations to calm waters from the rough seas of apartheid. It is this leadership that, despite all forms of skepticism, has stayed focused to contribute to the achievement of peace in the DRC, Burundi and other places. It is this consistent leadership that made the African Union and the Sudan government ask South Africa to assist in resolving problems in Darfu, Sudan.

Our involvement in peace work on the continent is informed by our desire to contribute to the creation of a continent at peace with itself. It is true that Africa may not meet the AU’s millennium goals, particularly that of halving poverty by 2015, but we should not despair. We should instead motivate ourselves to achieve what we can and strive to reach our final destination.

The newly created Peace and Security Council has the responsibility of working towards freeing the African continent from wars and conflict and creating conditions for peace and security, as this will enhance our chances of reducing poverty and underdevelopment. Good social and political governance should not constitute a burden to African leaders, but should be something that we create to ensure that our people prosper.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to meet with the foreign minister of Sudan, who indicated that it was the desire of the Sudan people to move quickly to a resolution of the conflict, so as to contribute to the effort South Africa was making in creating an environment in which all states on the continent would achieve their full potential. It is this commitment to finding solutions to our problems that will assist us in strengthening the continental and regional structures, in particular the African Union and SADC, in order to implement our socioeconomic programmes, such as Nepad. The recent inauguration of the Pan-African Parliament has demonstrated the preparedness of the continent to move forward with its agenda of bringing its entire population together to contribute to its rebirth. It is my trust, Comrade President, that you will do everything in your power and ability to persuade other heads of state and governments to award South Africa the opportunity of hosting the Pan-African Parliament.

I am aware that the euphoria of that announcement may not be the same as the Fifa announcement of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup, but it is equally critical that the summit, in making its decision, consider us. The Pan-African Parliament protocol encourages each country to ensure that the opinions of its people are reflected in that country’s delegation in its assembly. However, there are attempts to distort the intention of the protocol on this matter by people who have accused the ANC of centralism, whilst they are the worst powermongers and they do everything to squeeze power. Even if they have to tell stories that border on lies, they are willing to do so.

Another issue of critical importance is the creation of the assembly of the SADC parliamentarians. I am aware that this matter is before Parliament, but it is important that all South Africans find time to contribute to its discussion and arrive at a view that will see South Africa contributing to the building of the region. These discussions will also help parliaments in the region find their role in the implementation of Nepad and related programmes, as articulated by the SADC strategic plan.

It is, therefore, critical that we discuss and clarify for ourselves what we want to create and, at the same time, answer the question as to how this new body will contribute to implementation and to the consolidation of the region. The answers we provide will enhance our decisions. It is my trust that the President will continue to give attention and assistance to Zimbabwe and Swaziland, in particular to find solutions that will be embraced by all role-players in those countries.

Yes, there are those who always seek to push us to act unilaterally, who express frustration and impatience with our policy of collective engagement in dealing with regional and continental issues. They will again and again attempt to demonise this Government and, in some instances, not tell the truth in their endeavours to prove that this black Government in South Africa is no different from any that exists on the continent.

Despite the fact that the history of the last 10 years and the reality on the ground have demonstrated that the ANC has the support of the masses, as confirmed by our election results, they will continue to propagate the idea, lying to win the elections and govern this country. It was with great delight that some of us read that the International Investment Council has expressed confidence in our policies and systems. It is true that we are competing very well with other countries that are at our level of economic development, as far as creating favourable conditions for investment.

This news, communicated correctly, will result in the possibility of increased investment. Therefore it is critical that those who own the instruments of communication help in communicating this message. It is, therefore, important that we intensify the implementation of our policies to fight for the poor and poverty-stricken masses of the continent and the world.

In the not too distant future South Africa will be peer reviewed. The fundamental issue that must be raised is how this Parliament will relate not only to the outcomes of the review, but also to the process. We, as an assembly of our people, therefore need to ask how we can engage our masses in this process and how we are going to address the outcome of the review, with a view to improving where we are weak and consolidating where we are strong. I raise this issue because sometimes we do not inform ourselves sufficiently, not only in this Parliament, but also across the region, on progress and development, as the Nepad secretariat and the implementation committee continue to do their work.

For our country to succeed in its endeavour to build a better Africa and a better world, it is important that we go back to the tools that we used during our fight against apartheid, that of mobilising the world towards a fight that was fought successfully. It is my view that, unless we dig deeper to that knowledge of international mobilisation and solidarity and utilise the skills we gained in mobilising our people, we will not win the battle against underdevelopment and poverty, nor will we succeed in creating a secure international environment.

So long as conditions that breed terrorism exist, the world will remain insecure and this will allow the strong to have their way and the weak will have to succumb to the dictates of the powerful. Our collective security rests with our unity as a people in the world. The challenge is to struggle against the tendency of the powerful to decide which leader is allowed to stay in his country and rule, and which one they will forcefully evict despite the fact that he was elected by his people.

The unity of the developing countries, as demonstrated recently at the WTO, must be strengthened to provide security for each other. If we wait and only come together when we have a crisis, then we will remain weak and we will continually be put under pressure to accept what is dished out by the powerful no matter how poisonous it may be - if we reject our master’s voice we will be evicted and vilified for standing up for our rights.

It is critical that we consolidate the South-South and North-South relations to our mutual benefit. The ANC supports this Vote. I thank you. [Applause.]

Mr I S MFUNDISI: Chairperson, the President and hon colleagues, the Presidency serves as the engine that drives and co-ordinates Government activities. This office should therefore be equipped with the best human and material resources. It was way back in 1996 that the President, then Deputy President, delivered his now world-renowned speech ``I am an African’’ that reverberated across the length and breadth of the continent.

It is therefore no surprise that he has become synonymous with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. He has succeeded to put his case in terms of Nepad so that, whenever the acronym is used, President Mbeki’s image flashes across the inner eye.

President Mbeki, with his unassuming disposition, is always concerned about the poverty of and need for help by people in Africa. World audiences, whether at the UN or the G8 countries, know how passionate he is about the subject. Because of the high calibre of officials in the Presidency, it is not surprising that capacity demands in Nepad and the African Union and a high level of involvement in peace initiatives in Africa have been placed on this office. It is this office that caters for the head and management of the Nepad secretariat.

In his efforts to get his compatriots out of poverty, the President does not end up by calling for hand-outs. He keeps coaxing the nation not to be like dumb driven cattle but urges them to get down to work and to be self- reliant.

To this end he has called for a revision of the labour laws to attract investors and cater for the needs of the workers. He has called for a complete revamp of immigration regulations to ensure that they are compatible with the principal Act and the Constitution.

Over the past weekend, the President convened his own creation, the International Advisory Council, and went on to address the International Council for Small Business in his quest to ensure that economic stability for his country is attained. The President has turned out to be a man for all seasons. Traditional leaders in this country sing praises about him. According to the Chairman of the National House of Traditional Leaders, the President has found no meeting with them to be insignificant. He has made himself accessible to them as much as he can. There is no doubt that the Presidency looks after the interests of all South Africans. The appointment of the Deputy President to head the committee set up by Government to assist the 2010 World Soccer Bid Committee is clear proof that this office leaves nothing to chance.

The fact that Presidents Kabila and Kagame of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda respectively, whose countries are at the brink of war, have called on our President to help stop the hostilities is sufficient proof that he is held in high regard by other leaders on the continent. We therefore call on the people of this country to look up to the number one citizen, and do as he does by waking up early and going to bed late. If we lived up to his words in the recent state of the nation address, when he said that his Government had lost patience with penpushers and stamp handlers who tended to make it their business to get to work as late as possible and to knock off as early as they could, we would improve our work ethic.

The role of the Minister in the Presidency cannot be overlooked. He, according to Justice Kriegler, has to be credited with the establishment of the Party Liaison Committee to enable parties to thrash out problems that beset them in the elections. He has tackled his responsibilities in the Office on the Status of Women, the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons and the National Youth Commission with the same vigour that belies his stature. The UCDP supports the Budget Vote. [Applause.]

Miss J E SOSIBO: Chairperson, the hon President, the hon Deputy President, the hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, we gather here today in order to give account of what the ANC-led Government has done and how it plans to discharge its resources to improve the lives of our people.

President Thabo Mbeki once announced 21 development nodes, with 13 for rural development and eight for urban development in terms of our national Urban Renewal and the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programmes. The aim of these programmes is to conduct a sustained campaign against rural and urban poverty and underdevelopment, bringing together all the resources of all three spheres of government in a co-ordinated manner. They further aim to improve living conditions for the urban and rural people through economic growth, development, infrastructure, social and institutional development, and the enhancement of delivery capacity. Moreover, the President in his state of the nation address of February 2002 said:

The recognition by the peoples of the world of the fact that we have established ourselves as a winning nation, as a people determined to succeed, places an obligation on us in fact to succeed.

It is against this backdrop that the monitoring and evaluation aspects of these programmes are indicative of a strong recognition that Government intends to maximise the impact of its expenditures and investments. The national Urban Renewal Programme is a programme targeted at supporting areas with the largest concentrations of urban poverty and, because of that, eight urban nodes have been identified. The common feature of these nodes is that they are areas of severe social economic infrastructure neglect, where poverty is most endemic, where social capacity is real but where there is potential for growth.

The ANC-led Government has made remarkable progress as far as nodes are concerned. All nodes have reviewed their IDPs; the Planning, Implementation and Management Support centres are in place to support nodes; technical and political champions are in place for all nodes across all three spheres of government; anchor projects are diversifying and creating conducive conditions for local economic development; and sustainable development and communications strategies have been developed for the nodes.

The URP and the ISRDP represent a commitment to the people-driven approach to local economic development already envisaged in the RDP. This approach places poverty alleviation at the centre of development and therefore seeks to respond by bringing development initiatives closer to communities within the nodes. It calls for development efforts at the area level, in places where people live.

Plans are in place for a vigorous visit to these nodes to perform our oversight responsibilities and contribute to pushing back the frontiers of poverty. The national Urban Renewal and Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programmes are at the cutting edge of promoting effective service delivery and deepening local democracy, and we see this as a major step forward in furthering the goals of our national democratic revolution.

The Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme and the URP are comprehensive and developmental programmes that are aimed at addressing the problems of the second economy that include unemployment, poverty and underdevelopment. Without this effort by the ANC-led Government, jobs created in these nodal areas would never have been realised. The Urban Renewal Programme and ISRDP are part of the concrete manifestations of key strategic programmes engineered by the ANC, which are a correct response to South Africa’s urban and rural challenges to address the immediate needs of ordinary South Africans.

The local government budget allocations are indicative of the fact that the ANC and the President were correct when they said that depressed economic areas should benefit and reap the fruits of our democracy.

Again, in his state of the nation address, the President mentioned that a central component of rural development was the provision, upgrading and maintenance of infrastructure for water and sanitation. Government will, therefore, work to ensure that within the next few years all households in South Africa have easy access to clean running water.

Investment will continue to go into major infrastructure projects to ensure sustained water security. The budget seeks to increase the impact of the ISRDP to those in the far-flung areas of South Africa. While recognising noticeable challenges, considerable interventions have been deployed to counter these administrative and capacity challenges. More work is being done to prevent this by introducing the Intergovernmental Relations Bill in Parliament later in the year to improve co-ordination between the three spheres of government and facilitate greater capacity- building initiatives to improve the quality of spending.

A substantial amount of the equitable share goes to municipalities and significant additional allocations for local government go directly to the municipal infrastructure grant, which is a consolidation of infrastructure grants from other national sector departments. This enables municipalities to address backlogs in basic municipal infrastructure in a sustainable manner, and to promote the creation of jobs through the Expanded Public Works Programme.

While progress has been realised in this regard, the success of the URP and ISRDP depends significantly on integrated governance. In the interests of broadening access to services, the Department of Communications not so long ago hosted provincial summits to discuss issues of local content and the broadcasting needs of the urban and rural areas of our country. At the end, a national summit was convened in which ordinary people of our country highlighted the need for a better reflection of their languages and cultures in the broadcasting system.

In line with Government’s intention for a more equitable geographic spread of economic activity and gender participation, the Department of Communication will officially launch the 112 emergency service in partnership with local government. This will be a major breakthrough for the most vulnerable sectors of our population.

A total of 177 anchor projects in rural nodes were in place by March 2004, compared to 115 in March 2003, and the actual investment of national departments was R5,9 billion. Through the national Urban Renewal Programme, the eight urban nodes are focusing on 98 anchor projects. Since their introduction in July 2001, we have seen the quality of anchor projects steadily improving and have also seen increasing levels of investment from national and provincial government departments. The fight against poverty has gained momentum over the past few years, with the ANC-led Government making ever-greater strides to improve the lives of the country’s poorest. The ANC-led Government should be commended for coming up with such a remarkable strategy whereby the ordinary people of our country benefit in ways that improve their socioeconomic conditions.

This strategy also enables people to sustain their day-to-day lives and helps poor people who are feeling marginalised to benefit and take part in Government programmes. The ANC-led Government will not sit by while people continue suffering, and it will walk side by side with ordinary people to come up with workable ways to lessen the burden of the scourges of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment.

Finally, the dynamics of our country force us to engage with developments. Therefore this process must be understood within the context of rationalising our new system of local government and giving meaningful effect to the call for a people’s contract for a better South Africa and a better world. With these few words the ANC, therefore, supports this Budget Vote. I thank you. [Applause.]

Dr S E M PHEKO: Chairman, Mr President, the PAC supports this Budget Vote. There are five Presidential programmes, which this Budget is to serve. They are administration, support to the President and the Deputy President, the Cabinet Office, policy co-ordination and the National Youth Commission. The purpose of the latter is stated as the transferal of voted funds to enable the National Youth Commission to achieve its goals. It is further stated that the measurable objective for the Youth Commission is to monitor its use of funds in its execution of youth development in our country, as well as on the African continent.

It is important that the fund develops the youth nationally and without consideration of their party politics. A number of youths complain that some officials, who run youth affairs through the National Youth Commission, do not seem to understand that this is a state institution. Participants in the youth developmental activities facilitated through the National Youth Commission are largely satisfied with the training they receive, but some have complained that those who come from afar in the country are not provided with accommodation, food and transport. They have had to cut short their stay at the training centres because they had no funds. It is also very important for information to reach the youth so that they can benefit from this Commission.

The Office on the Status of Women seems to be underfunded. The Pan Africanist Congress wishes to see more policy implementation that ensures that the quality of the status of women is improved. We need to see a decrease in women suffering as a result of HIV/Aids and unemployment. Next year will be ten years after the Beijing Conference. Will the lives of women be found to have improved?

On programme policy co-ordination, I want to repeat what I have said twice now in this Parliament about the current Government policy on the land question. Land has been the primary contradiction of our liberation struggle, from our wars of national resistance against colonialism. It is our essential heritage. It is worth far more than money. It is a national tragedy that today, while our own people remain dispossessed and poor, we have allowed the sale of land to foreigners. I repeat: we must by law forbid the sale of our land to foreigners. Let them be given renewable 99- year leases instead.

As long as our land, which is the source of our riches, is sold to foreigners before it is even equitably redistributed, the indigenous majority of this country can forget about the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment. I must add that the Restitution of Land Rights Act, which limited land claims to 31 December 1998, was illogical and unjust. It has excluded thousands of land claimants, let alone section 25 of the Constitution, which confines land claims to the crumbs of the Native Land Act of 1913. The PAC notes that capacity demands have been placed on the Presidency in respect, inter alia, of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, Nepad, and the high level of involvement of this country in peace initiatives in Africa.

The PAC believes that peace is a necessary ingredient for the development of Africa. The wars that continue to erupt in various parts of the Continent are not ours. These wars are sponsored by the imperialist forces, which are only interested in the riches of this Continent. There has never been a time when Africa needed to speak more with one voice on issues of foreign debts, HIV/Aids and the eradication of poverty than today.

The Pan African space of the African Union and Pan African Parliament must be a vibrant space which formulates policies in the African context that are driven by the African people themselves. The PAC will continue to persist on the Pan African road. It is the only road for the survival and security of Africa and its assured prosperous future.

Forty-five years ago, two giant Pan Africanists authoritatively stated the need for the African Union. On 24 May 1963 Kwame Nkrumah said:

The resources are there. It is for us to marshal them in the active service of our people. Unless we establish the African Union now, we who are sitting here today shall tomorrow be the victims and martyrs of neocolonialism.

[Time expired.]

Mr E N MTHETHWA: Chairperson, hon President, Deputy President, members, comrades and distinguished guests, this month, the youth month, also marks the 49th year since the adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People in Kliptown. On the economic front, this charter proclaims:

The People Shall Share in the Country’s Wealth!

It continues:

The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people …

Our Government inherited a skewed economy based on race and male domination. In essence, white males elevated themselves to being the captains of South African industries. This was a direct result of boosting the lives of the poor urban Afrikaner and consequently the subsidisation of white farming communities.

Elsewhere around the globe, similar processes were unfolding, characterised by the oppression of one by the other. The creation of the world institutions in 1945 further subjected the nations of the south to poverty and underdevelopment. Among these institutions are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, of IMF. In its evolution, South Africa’s apartheid economy, which was structurally flawed, continued to systematically marginalise the indigenous people through inter alia, discriminatory laws, inferior education and a lack of skills development. The end result was the super exploitation of the working masses of our land.

This then witnessed the unionisation of this sector against the same slavery situation. Addressing the 45th Annual Conference of the ANC, the then President Albert Luthuli said:

The length of the term of slavery depends largely on the oppressed themselves and not the oppressor.

When we say we inherited a horrible legacy, we mean these thorough going systematic projects of marginalisation, which saw its day since the advent of private ownership of the means of production. We mean a state where the developed countries of today use resources and wealth of the Third World countries to thrive. When we today approach the wealthy nations of the north, we are not doing so as beggars, but with the full appreciation of this historical reality. This is why our Government emphasizes south-south and north-south co-operation without some dictating terms to others. It implies nations of adults that are sharing these perspectives.

The first nonracial, nonsexist democratic government chose to create the Reconstruction and Development Programme, RDP, as its comprehensive socioeconomic programme, the content of which is in line with what was envisaged in the Freedom Charter 49 years ago. The RDP, the core of all post-1994 policies, has amongst its objectives the building the economy. We have witnessed continuous economic growth since 1994 and we have created jobs but not enough to keep up with the number of people looking for employment. Our economy has stabilised over the past decade and none is in dispute of the fact that Government policies have freed resources for social expenditure by reducing the interest we have to pay on debts. The budget deficit fell from 9.5% in 1993 to 1% in 2002-03. The public sector debt fell from 60% to 50%.

In the state of the nation address, the President focused on honouring the contract we entered into with the people of South Africa to fight poverty and create jobs. To this extent, he pledged that we need to encourage the growth and development of the first economy, increasing its ability to create jobs, implement our programme to address the challenge of the second economy and building a social security net to meet our objective of poverty alleviation. A unified approach for agencies dealing with the small and medium business sector will yield necessary spin-offs for such a sector. This is even more real given the R120 million pumped into it for growth and development purposes during this calendar year.

Learnership programmes in particular are beginning to be the hope of those who want to participate in the economic development of our country. Many young men and women have benefited through this scheme, which has increased their employability status. We applaud the Government in this regard, especially the President’s directive for a register of all graduates so as to link up with the Umsobomvu Youth Fund. Furthermore, we would like this registration eventually to include young aspirant entrepreneurship formations with an objective to structurally co-ordinate them at national level. This is borne out of the experience of the youth heeding the call Government’s call of vukuzenzele.

Sihlalo, singumholi wombutho wesizwe futhi nanjengohulumeni olwulayo esifundeni sakwaZulu-Natal, sakhe uhlelo olungunxantathu olunalezi zinhla kuwo: elokuqala ukuhlanganisa izakhiwo zomphakathi, ezamabhizinisi, ezenkolo nezobuholi bendabuko; ukuqhakambisa ukuthula nokuzibophezela kukho manje nangesikhathi esizayo. NgolweSine mhlaka-24 kule nyanga uhulumeni walesi sifundazwe ubize ukhukhulelangoqo womhlanganomkhuleko ezinkundleni zaseKings Park eThekwini. Sizobe sibonga umphakathi wonke ngokhetho olube nokuthula futhi laphathwa ngobulungiswa nangokungachemi. Okunye ukuthi sizobe sibheka ukuhlangana phakathi kwamaqembu amakhulu kulesiya sifundazwe okuyiANC neIFP, ikakhulukazi sigcizelela ebuholini besifundazwe ukuze selekelele ezinhlelweni zobuholi balezi zinhlangano ezingeni likazwelonke.

Yigxalaba Mongameli esifisa lifakwe ezinhlakeni eziseqoqweni lezokuphepha nokuvikela ezweni lonke ikakhulukazi ezobulungiswa. Amalunga ombutho kaKhongolose awakhululekile ngokuxhaphaka kwezikhali ezingekho emthethweni esifundazweni. Iningi lazo asiyazi imvelaphi yazo kodwa ukubhadanywa kukamnumzane Philip Powell ngonyaka ka-1999 nentaphane yezikhali ajike angaboshwa kusenza singathakasi ngezokushushisa kwezwe lethu. Muva nje endaweni yaseziNqoleni iqulu lentsha elazibiza ngamalungu e-IFP lathi uKhongolose akambophi umnumzane Powell ngoba engumlungu kodwa nakhu iNkosi uKhawula osewakhotha yena waboshwa. Asivumelani-ke nalo mbono kodwa njengabaholi besifundazwe sinxusa uNgqongqoshe omusha wezoBulungiswa aluphakamele lolu daba. (Translation of isiZulu paragraphs follows.)

[Chairperson, as the leadership of the organisation of the country and the provincial government of KwaZulu-Natal, we have created a three-way programme with the following aspects: to combine the community, business, religious and traditional leadership structures; to promote peace and to commit ourselves to it now and in the future. On Thursday, the 24th of this month, the provincial government of this province has called for a prayer meeting at the Kings Park stadium in Durban. We will be thanking the whole community for the peaceful elections that were just and fair. The other thing we will look at is the coalition between the majority parties in that province, which is between the ANC and IFP. This will emphasize in particular our willingness to help in the leadership of the province through programmes of leadership within these organisations at the national level.

This is what, Mr President, we wish to be included in the cluster of national safety and security - and in justice in particular. Members of the African National Congress are not comfortable with unlicensed firearms that are found everywhere in the province. We do not know where most of these firearms come from, but the apprehension of Philip Powell in 1999, with lots of firearms in his possession but not being prosecuted, makes us very much unhappy about the judicial system of our country. Recently, in the area of Nqoleni, a youth mob who called themselves IFP members said that the African National Congress did not prosecute Mr Powell because he was white, whereas Chief Khawula, who has since passed away, was prosecuted. We do not agree with this opinion, but as the leadership of the province we appeal to the newly appointed Minister of Justice to take this matter very seriously.]

We want to bury the hatchet in the province of KwaZulu-Natal and not fight with weapons. For if we do the latter, the chances of going back to peace will be abandoned. Our province is on the threshold of everlasting peace, economic growth, development and prosperity. We would further urge the Government to embark on random search-and-seize operations by South African Police Service members. This, we believe, would come in handy especially after this service has successfully combated crime in townships like Esikhawini.

In conclusion, we are upbeat with the prospects of humanity’s social progress in the province. There is no need to be pessimistic as we said during the election campaign:

Ikhona indlela eya phambili entuthukweni. [There is a way forward to development.]

Thank you. [Applause.]

Mr P J NEFOLOVHODWE: Chairperson, Comrade President of the Republic of South Africa and the Deputy President - he is no longer here. When things are not going well in the running of any country, we all cast our eyes beyond Parliament and the Ministers to the Presidency. It is therefore not surprising that, from time to time, Azapo does criticise some aspects of the work of the Presidency, and at other times heaps praises onto the Presidency. In all these instances we are motivated by the desire that our country should continue to succeed and be governed well.

Obviously we do not expect the Presidency to determine all aspects of our people’s lives or change the behaviour of every single individual in society. But Azapo is aware of the destructive and reactionary forces in our society. We will always urge the President, in particular, to accelerate the changes that are taking place in our society for the benefit of the poor, so that these reactionary forces should not use the poverty of our people to reverse the gains that we have thus far achieved. [Applause.]

Azapo has noted with appreciation and support the Presidency’s involvement in conflict resolution in Africa, particularly in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have noted further the work that is being done in the area of the international struggle to make bodies such as the United Nations more democratic. These and similar interventions in Africa and in the world demonstrate the important task that the Presidency has embarked upon on behalf of our country and its people. [Applause.]

The establishment of the Pan-African Parliament is another important milestone in the lives of South Africans and all inhabitants of the African continent. This parliament places a responsibility on our preparedness to move a step further towards integration of states in Africa.

A natural tendency is to hold on to our own constitutional and legal rights and resist any intention of the people of Africa to live as one. The challenges that lie ahead point to one thing: to see to it that the Pan-African Parliament becomes an important platform for political, social and economic integration of the continent.

In preparation for the future, the youth of our country, through the National Youth Service, should be encouraged to take the affairs of Africa seriously. Azapo is concerned that the National Youth Service’s activities are not prominent enough to turn the youth our country into responsible future citizens.

Azapo recognises that the youth are an important component of our society and that it is the youth who should be nurtured into the future upholders of the values and norms of our society. It is indeed the youth who are the future leaders of our country and the continent. We should as a country channel the energies of the youth into positive and productive activities. To this end, Azapo believes that in particular the youth must be made to interest themselves in developmental issues, issues of Africa, youth service to communities, including the creation of forums for debate on issues of Africa and the whole world.

Azapo supports the Budget Vote.

Mrs W S NEWHOUDT-DRUCHEN: Chairperson, hon President and hon members, before I start my speech, I would like to inform this House that I am using South African Sign Language. The interpreter, who is voicing for me, is Ronel. I am informing the House because a well-known magazine interviewed a staff member of Parliament who claims that she stands at the podium to voice for me. This misleading information brings down the integrity of Parliament and that is not the reason why we, as members with disabilities, are here in Parliament.

I have lived in the United States of America for six years and I have met many deaf students from developing countries. Many of these deaf students do not want to return home upon graduating because of the lack of access for people with disabilities in their own countries. I came back because I believe that changes will happen in South Africa that many things will become accessible and possible for people with disabilities. I thank the hon President for establishing the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons, OSDP, first in the Deputy President’s office and currently in the Presidency. [Applause.] I am a proud South African and proud of the achievements made by our Government for people with disabilities. Yes, there are still many things that need to be changed, but we are on course to make many more changes possible.

Since 1994, from the start of democracy in South Africa, the ANC has been making sure that changes were being put in place to make the lives of people with disabilities easier. This is indicated in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, the INDS, and in various laws that have been revised to include people with disabilities, such as the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, the Employment Equality Act and the SA Schools Act. As I have said, the OSDP was in the then Deputy President’s office, and then moved to the Presidency. This move has enabled the OSDP to effectively participate in the development of critical legislation, which guides the principles of Government with regard to the inclusion and integration of disability.

In 1994 there was only one disabled member of Parliament, and that increased up to about nine members in 1999; and now in 2004 I have lost track of how many members with disabilities there are and I have stopped counting. [Applause.]

Parliament has established a joint monitoring committee on children, youth and people with disabilities, so that this committee can provide oversight and monitoring over Government departments in these areas. For example, a disability desk has been established in provincial offices and some local offices. Different programmes announced by the president, such as the Expanded Public Works Programme, will include people with disabilities.

These are but a few achievements to mention, because there are so many that I can mention. The OSDP published a document called A 10-Year Review on Mainstreaming of Disability Issues in Government Policies and Programmes. I cannot speak about all it entails, but I will highlight some of the achievements and challenges for people with disabilities.

We are now moving away from a welfare and medical model to a social and human rights one, thereby creating a better life for people with disabilities through meeting all their socioeconomic needs. These are achievements and challenges in the different sectors. In the social sector, the social grants per person with disabilities have increased. However, as such persons with disabilities make up 6% of the population, only 2,1% receive disability grants. We need to work to ensure that more people with disabilities receive or have access to these grants. The challenge facing the OSDP is to train more civil servants in the use of assessment tools and to improve the identification mechanisms and procedures. An example that I can give here is that in a certain province district doctors believe that because deaf people appear physically healthy, they should not receive the grants - but the fact is that deafness prevents them from getting the work.

In the job creation programme of the Department of Public Works provision is made for training in trade and life skills. The challenge here is to make all Government buildings and service points accessible. In the education sector, special schools have been transferred into resource centres and full service schools. The audit of special schools has been completed. However, I am not sure if this report has been tabled in Parliament so that members of the education committee can read it.

The Department of Health has made provision for assistive devices. The Minister of Social Development announced on 1 July 2003 that people with disabilities would be able to access health care services in the public health sector free of charge. One of our members, hon Hendrietta Bogopane- Zulu, sits on the South African National Aids Council and she has been involved in making available resources for HIV/Aids awareness to people with disabilities. There are also many different challenges still being faced in the health sector by people with disabilities.

In the transport sector, we have already seen some public buses and taxis on our roads that are accessible to our people with disabilities. The challenge will be to implement a subsidy scheme to benefit people with disabilities so that that kind of transport is not expensive for our people. I am happy to know that the housing subsidy system includes people with disabilities and the target of 5% to 6% housing subsidies has been set for people with disabilities.

Communication has become my favourite topic, as it hits to the heart of the needs of people who are deaf. Information is power and we lack access to information, especially via television. The ANC through our resolutions have stated that the SABC must become accessible to people with disabilities. We have passed the Broadcasting Amendment Act, which states that the SABC must cater for the needs of people who are deaf and people who are blind. We are now looking forward to seeing TV programmes becoming accessible to us. There has been progress in this sector, such as ICASA having special workshops for people for disabilities, and the involvement of people with disabilities in production and implementation of community radio programmes.

A total of 0,25% of the total public servants employed are people with disabilities. The challenge is for the Public Service as a whole, and each line department, to achieve the 2% target of employment of people with disabilities by 2005. I hope that when we have achieved that target percentage in 2005, it can then be increased.

We have to make our courts accessible to people with disabilities, such as with the provision of sign language interpreters and the Braille translation of documents. The OSDP states that the equality courts have been a success. The OSDP is also involved in the African Decade, Nepad and the development of the proposed UN Convention on the Equalisation of Opportunities for People with Disabilities. This was done in partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs. I have just read an e-mail from a friend in Cameroon. She feels that there is a need for South African assistance in informing the Cameroon government about the needs of people with disabilities.

The OSDP has reported that 70 officials have been trained in the provinces and 70 at national Government level. Nine disability desks have been established. I still need to know about the number of disability desks at district and metro level. There are 24 officials representing the national Government in the OSDP’s interdepartmental collaborative committee.

Before I end off, I would like to say something to my honourable members on my left. Do not try to get votes from people with disabilities, especially deaf people, just before the elections. I believe that the DA, ACDP, ID and FF Plus have tried to lobby for votes and some of you have given them a false impression that they will get seats in Parliament. But I am disappointed that during your last five years of term you have not been vocal about the needs of people with disabilities. [Applause] The ANC gained 70% of the votes anyway and people with disabilities know who is really vocal about their needs and who is working to ensure access for them. Chairperson, the ANC supports Budget Vote No 1. I thank you. [Applause.]

Mrs C-S BOTHA: Chairperson, hon President. I would like to take this opportunity to compliment the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs on her very good taste in jackets. [Laughter.]

The President’s promotion of so many women to Cabinet has strengthened South Africa’s precious legacy of respect for the status of women, which is so deeply embedded in our Constitution. But, there is one man in South Africa who seems to have the power to undermine this entire edifice. This is a man, Chairperson, who claims that he is untouchable, because he is a personal appointee of the President.

It is therefore necessary that the hon President lays to rest, once and for all, the suspicion that this man - South African ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia, Norman Manuel Mashabane - has the power to hold the women of South Africa, the Office of the Status of Women, the Gender Commission, the Constitution, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency, to ransom.

Let me elaborate. For more than two years the hon Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, refrained from taking steps, despite the fact that two senior departmental officials recommended not merely that the ambassador be suspended, but that he be dismissed, having been found guilty on 22 counts of sexual harassment.

We all know what courage it takes to bring such demeaning, intimate experiences into the public domain and to speak out against people who hold your livelihood in their hands. That is why we fought so hard to have an Office of the Status of Women in the Presidency and sexual harassment codes in every Government department.

Hoekom het hierdie man so ‘n uitsonderlike houvas oor die agb Minister dat sy bereid is om haar feministiese reputasie op te offer om hom te beskerm en in die proses ‘n bespotting te maak van ons verbintenis tot die bemagtiging van vroue? [Why does this man have such an exceptional hold on the hon Minister that she is prepared to sacrifice her feminist reputation to protect him, in the process making a laughing stock of our commitment to the empowerment of women?]

This is a man identified in disciplinary reports as an unreliable witness, who states in staff meetings that the thought of sleeping with a white woman disgusts him, who is found guilty on multiple charges of sexual harassment, yet is exonerated - while the women who brought the charges are slandered by totally unsubstantiated generalisations.

I quote the Minister: ``Sometimes, when so many people complain about exactly the same thing, it is likely that they have been put up to do it’’. What is being said is not that this man is obviously a serial sex pest, but that all the women are stupid enough to be bamboozled into making public clowns of themselves!

But, moreover, we stand to be further humiliated by the fact that the ambassador has agreed to be a keynote speaker at an international symposium on gender, nogal, in Djakarta this September; the very place where he allegedly molested his domestic staff and harassed his employees.

We therefore have to implore the hon President to tell this Assembly why Ambassador Mashabane is being allowed to make such fools of all of us. Thank you. [Applause.]

The CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Chairperson, the President of the Republic, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

We would like to take this opportunity to extend our condolences to the families of the South African soldiers who, earlier this month, were killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We salute all those who have given their lives to ensure that we achieve the goal of creating peace and friendship. We honour their heroism, conscious of the importance to us and all humanity of peaceful international engagements.

We must achieve stability so that we can concentrate our attention on the problems pertaining to developing our countries. We have an obligation to expend every effort to banish underdevelopment with all its allied afflictions such as poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and lack of skills. Ours is about honour and dignity.

This coming Saturday we will observe the 49th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. As we celebrate 10 years of freedom, the assertion made by our people in 1955 that the people shall govern has not only been realised, but its progressive deepening is beginning to show in the continued resilience and stability of our democratic process.

The assertion that South Africa belongs to all who live in it guided the drafters of our Constitution to give legal recognition of citizenship rights to all South Africans. It places a responsibility on all of us not only to lay claim to these rights, but also to contribute to the development and progress of this country.

As we move on and develop, we are always confronted with a degree of negativity and backwardness, as some amongst us seem to have assumed the shameful position that, while enjoying all the benefits that have come with the advent of democracy, they will do everything they can to avoid contributing towards development and progress. They argue that their role is to be watchdogs.

In a country where centuries of history were characterised by racial oppression and exploitation, they figure their contribution can only be to play a role as watchdogs. In a country where for centuries women were oppressed, exploited and relegated to the status of minors, they are prepared to contribute towards progress in this regard, but only as watchdogs. For centuries, the majority of our people lived their lives in conditions of slavery, having been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace. For decades, cheap labour policies in employment and segregation concentrated skills in the white section of our community.

In the face of this and many other social, political, economic, moral, cultural and environmental ills, the hands of our watchdogs, as they wish it, will remain clean, never to be dirtied in the practical and broader service of the South African nation. Our history and conditions demand from all South Africans that they should take part in a people’s contract to defeat the painful legacy of our past. As part of celebrating the first decade of freedom, we must, all of us, as these people to whom South Africa belongs, for our own sake and that of us all as human beings, embrace and take forward the Letsema volunteer campaign to give effect to the concept and goal of a new patriotism.

The President has made the call for all of us, as South Africans, to work together, to create work and to fight poverty; and we do this as part of our pursuit of the goal of a better life for all the people of our country. One way to ensure that we sustain our democracy is by investing in our youth. The establishment of the National Youth Commission emanated from the very real need to address the challenges confronting our youth. The main objective of this commission is to facilitate, co-ordinate and monitor the development and implementation of integrated policies and related problems, in order to promote youth development in South Africa and on the African continent.

To this end, the National Youth Information Service was established to provide accurate and relevant information regarding sexual, career and academic development. In addition, a National Youth Service was created to provide opportunities for the youth to contribute towards socioeconomic development in the country.

In the fight against poverty, we are faced with numerous challenges. The imbizo campaign brings Government structures face to face with the material aspects of underdevelopment and poverty. Running concurrently with imbizo are the sectoral engagements the President holds with other key stakeholders in the country. Such campaigns and interactions ensure that the people of our country understand and work effectively with Government. In this regard, we should also expect that key policy issues, such as the issue of land ownership, for instance, will emanate as part of the engagement and public policy debates.

The Ten-Year Review which evaluated Government’s performance revealed an increase in adult literacy rates since 1996, and free health care for women and children under the age of six years. The Integrated Nutrition Programme now reaches almost 4,58 million children. Dedicated expenditure on HIV/Aids programmes across national departments has increased from R30 million in 1994 to R342 million in 2001-02. The proportion of households having access to clean water translates into around 9 million citizens. Access to sanitation increased to 63% of households and approximately 70% of households receive electricity.

Despite the gains made, much still needs to be done. We need to ensure that mechanisms focus on outputs; make decisions transparent; link cost and benefits; encourage and support commitment, loyalty and integrity. Our society needs good communicators who are able to motivate people through persuasion and conviction rather than seniority and orders. Public representatives must themselves embrace and promote the values of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness and honesty. We need people who are dedicated to improving the lives of our people. We need to replace these adverse cultural and practice mechanisms that control rather than liberate. Some time ago we launched the Batho Pele - the people first - programme. The principles encompassed within this programme emphasised, among others, consultation with the people on the level and quality of public services, equal access to services, and being treated with courtesy and consideration. Our duties extend beyond promoting or demanding high standards of moral behaviour. But, in introducing integrity through public awareness campaigns and targeting our youth through morality in action, our accomplishments as a young democratic nation regarding oversight and accountability have been a beacon in times of rough seas.

We have much to be proud of. We have voted appropriate anti-corruption legislation that criminalises corruption and outlines appropriate punishment. We have codes of conduct, a register of members’ interests. We have the Public Finance Management Act which holds Government departments accountable and ensures that they establish internal audit functions, reassessments, training, etc. We have promoted the passage of the freedom of information legislation that allows for access to information. We have electoral legislation that encourages and enforces transparency in the electoral process. We have streamlined and ensured the equity of laws and regulations on government programmes and procedures, taxation, administration of justice, etc.

We can be proud of these mechanisms, but we know we can do much better in ensuring that the maximum use of our constitutional and other legal mechanisms for ensuring oversight of government is utilised effectively. We must execute our roles with compassion and dedication. We have a duty to institute and reinforce oversight. Our committee structure of this Parliament provides a valuable forum for scrutinising Government business and we need to ensure that we make optimum use thereof. Strengthening the powers of - and resources to - committees when analysing Government department budgets and the execution of budgetary plans, is crucial.

The state has made significant progress in recent years in improving policy co-ordination both within and across spheres of Government, but these need to be consolidated through focusing on implementation.

South Africa’s role in world affairs is growing. We are faced with the challenges posed by globalisation. We have to be more determined to consolidate democratic institutions and culture through multilateral processes. South Africa’s prominent role in Nepad places heavy demands on the Presidency, as has the significant role and involvement of South Africa in peace initiatives.

However, the positive spirit that derives from these efforts is captured in the words of Professor Maria Nzomo, head of the University of Nairobi’s institute of diplomacy and international studies, who said: ``Africa is coming of age in handling its own affairs. There is a new sense that Africa ought to be refereeing its own disputes.’’

This observation confirms the correctness of our approach. The critical issues in our next decade of political history include human and institutional development, diversifying structures, raising competitiveness, taking care of natural resources and mobilising resources for development financing. All of these are crucial elements in increasing the capacity of South Africa to accelerate and sustain growth and to fight poverty.

With this immense responsibility and the renewed momentum in the continent’s pursuit for peace and prosperity has come the need for more resources. International and continental demands on the Presidency have necessitated an increase in support services and thus an increase in expenditure. In the fight to eradicate conflict on our continent, African efforts need stronger international support - politically as well as in the economic arena - where greater debt relief and market access for more diversified African exports are crucial to ensure better living standards that promote stability.

Within the Presidency is the Policy Co-ordination Unit, which oversees the Offices on the Status of Women, on Disabled Persons and on the Rights of the Child. Each of these have been involved in advisory services on the implementation of the gender policy framework, systems for monitoring the Integrated National Disability Strategy and the advisory service on cross- cutting sectoral policies on children and monitoring implementation respectively.

Worth noting is the fact that the outputs have resulted in the development of a national action plan by the Office on the Status of Women, capacity enhancement in Government by training provincial officials and drafting a local government framework by the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons, and the Office on the Rights of the Child playing a key role in involving stakeholders in developing a comprehensive document on children’s rights.

All of us must commit ourselves to play our part in forging the people’s contract for a better South Africa, inspired by our commitment to democratic consultation, mass participation and voluntarism, moral regeneration, as well as people-centred and people-driven development. We support the Budget Vote. Thank you. [Applause.]

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 18:13.