09 February 2003
Madam Speaker
President Thabo Mbeki and Cabinet Colleagues
Honourable Members
Friends
I am certain that most South Africans expected the debate on the state of the nation address to be more than ordinary and for obvious reasons, it is already living up to some of those expectations.
For this year, the debate on the state of the nation address by our President, also gives this house an opportunity to look at our own work in the past 10 years and to introspectively deal with the issue of how far this institution has contributed to the realisation of the ideal to build a better country for all our people.
Allow me, from the outset, Madam Speaker to send our condolences to the family of baby Karabo Gwala, who was recently killed in a freak accident in Soweto. May God give them comfort during their time of pain.
Madam Speaker, a lot will be said here about the extent to which Government has succeeded in bringing to fruition the ideal of building a better future for our country. As it has been repeated several times from this podium, the most important yardstick for this success will be how it has impacted on the lives of the most ordinary and the most vulnerable members of our society. I will like my input in part to focus on some of the people who fall within this category, the rural women of our country, who represent the majority of the people most affected by the problems we have been trying to resolve in the past ten years since the dawn of our democracy.
I thought it befitting to dedicate this speech to a woman who symbolises the resilience and strength of these ordinary mothers of our nation. A woman who has given so much to us, and still remains an unsung heroin. In a true sense, a mother to all of us who has offered and provided without asking for much in return. Because amongst the rural women that we will talk about here today stands someone to whom we should duly give recognition - umama Epiannette Mbeki, the mother to our President Thabo Mbeki. Not only because she has given birth to such an outstanding leader who has meant a lot to his people, but because like the many who are the legions of this ordinary sector of our people, she has remained truly committed to her community of Engcingwane, a small dusty village in Idutywa, with whom she has remained until this day, despite an easy access to the high life she could have chosen to enjoy. Her story is the story of the many others who have remained pillars of our society. She has haboured no bitterness to a system that took away all the people she loved, her husband to Robben Island, her children to foreign land and left her with the responsibility not only to be head of her own family but to lead and serve a community that to this day looks up to her as their mother and grandmother as well. We should salute mothers like her and duly allow them their rightful recognition and place when the South African story is told.
I illustrate here the story and character of these women so that when we assess the amount of work Government has done in their development, we truly appreciate where they have come from and what genuine expectations they have for the future of a country whose destiny is so intertwined with theirs and that of their children.
Madam Speaker, amongst the multitudes that descended on an empty piece of land that cold afternoon of the 26th of June 1955 in Kliptown, were also many ordinary women who had come to add their voice in determining the kind of society they desired to live in. From this Congress of the People, the Freedom Charter was born which most importantly declared "The people shall govern". Marching towards making this assertion a reality, the ANC carried it in all its activities, in its planning and in the process of preparing to govern.
Just as it happened on that day in Kliptown, the leadership of this government has been arriving in many such dusty areas through the Imbizo programmes to listen to the people in a manner that demonstrate the ANC's commitment to this brand of participatory democracy. The Imbizo by leaders of Government at all levels has provided a platform for us to seek further mandate, to consult and to feedback to the people, true to the declaration that, in the real sense, the people shall govern.
To this date, the most ordinary of our people, the majority of whom are these rural women, are afforded an opportunity to interact and engage their government on issues affecting their lives and their communities. So, from the start we can be true to our mothers who gathered on that day and assert that the people are indeed governing.
During the run up to the 1994 election, women had gathered as part of the ANC convened People's Forums and said to us that they would never truly feel the taste of freedom if they would still be condemned to being hewers of wood and drawers of water, live with their children abject poverty and that they die of curable and preventable diseases. Some said their land was taken away from them preventing them producing their own food and affected accommodation of and housing for their families. Out of these and many other forums the Reconstruction and Development Programme of the ANC emerged. Consultation and report backs on progress regarding these problems continued during the past ten years.
During the past ten years, what then has been the response of the democratic government to these and many other problems directly inherited from decades of injustice and oppression?
Honourable members will remember that since Kliptown, we have vowed that in the South Africa that we envisaged "All shall be equal before the law". And indeed during its first decade, this democratic parliament has passed laws that have made it possible for women to be included as human beings and citizens with equal rights and standing before the law. Amongst these pieces of legislation has been the revolutionary Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, which has given great relief to rural women who used to be left by husbands who came to work in the big cities, marry a new wife through the Civil Marriages Act and force the rural wife to lose all her rights to the matrimonial estate, left destitute with dozens of children to feed.
This new policy regime has created institutions that monitor the implementation of women empowerment programmes by government thereby placing them strategically in a position to be watchdogs for women emancipation.
The policy dispensation has also led to the enactment of ground breaking pieces of legislation in the areas of Human Rights, black economic empowerment, preferential procurement and of course, the Termination of Pregnancy Act. These pieces of legislation, that have been celebrated by women throughout our country and the world, however, have been demonised by some of our members in this House, because some of them can never really imagine how it feels to be a woman under the yoke of institutionalised oppression. Some of these laws have directly contributed to the sense of security that many women enjoy today. Whereas in the past they have been vulnerable to public and domestic violence, today it is possible for them to seek protection for themselves and their children from this government.
Based on the foundation of this legislative and policy framework, it was possible for the ANC government to address some of the socio-economic problems facing our communities.
The ANC government understood that the provision of electricity and water in the rural areas was not just an exercise to make life easier in those communities, but that for women in particular, it was a social revolution that reversed their role as hewers of wood and ensured that they will sleep better in the knowledge that their children would no longer suffer from diseases such as Cholera as a result of drinking unclean water.
Of course to someone who has had access to this water all along in the past, the provision of this water to the rural people might not seem such a big stride. Someone who has had eight taps in the same household might even move around telling these communities that theirs was only one communal tap provided by Government to serve 30 households. But for these people that one tap makes a huge difference because it brings clean healthy water that saves lives.
Madam Speaker, again, the Imbizo programme has given us an opportunity to see first hand the impact of the work of this Government on communities. Many communities are now engaged in programmes of sustainable development, supported by Government and these are bringing a lot of relief to these areas where the battle for survival is a stark reality of daily life. These projects have included the support for new and emerging farmers in the rural areas, the land restitution programme whose proper management has made it possible for many ordinary people to return back to their land with as little disputes and conflicts as possible. From this programme ordinary communities in the rural areas were afforded the possibility for subsistence farming, others even utilised their land for implementation of income generating projects.
Everyday communities are seeing meaningful changes in their lives through support that government has given to grassroots projects such as these.
What has been most encouraging about most of these projects is that they involve work that has been initiated by communities themselves and government have come through to support and sustain these. In their response to your call Mr. President, for Letsema and Vuk'uzenzele, our people are joining hands with government to drive development and not to remain passive recipients of government generosity. Through this we have been successful in many areas to create work and fight poverty.
Madam Speaker, I have found it quite saddening that there have been certain people who have been at pains to use every opportunity they get to tell our people that much needed services that the ANC government provides to them is unbefitting and that our people should demand much more better, whatever the circumstances. If you provide a million houses for those who never had any form of accommodation at all, there is always talk of the houses being too small, if you build a clinic then the community will be told not to appreciate it because it is not big enough or that it does not open 24 hours. One of the things that we know, however, is that our people even those that are yet to receive these services are confident that there is a real commitment by this government to change their lives for the better. Because even if there are many more who still have not received decent housing or electricity, they too are given hope because millions who used to be like them now have such amenities. In the past few years these shameless prophets of doom have even tried to convince us that something is seriously wrong if black matriculants can write the same exam as their white counterparts and pass in large numbers. This was after they had complained in the earlier years that the matric pass rate was too low because the ANC government can't improve the system.
The repeated calls that South Africa deserves better, have not produced a real alternative aimed at providing better solutions for those that have suffered for far too long. If anything the slogan "South Africa deserves better", should be understood to mean that non-racial democracy has failed, and what South Africa deserves is to go back to white minority rule.
Honourable members, I also thought it necessary that we should dispel disturbing notions by some amongst us here in this house who think that just because they belong to an opposition political party that gives them the right to move around our country and stand on this podium to spread horror stories of lies and innuendo. There are others who have insinuated that if it wins the next elections, the ANC intends drastically to overhaul the constitution of this country, by effecting far reaching changes to the basis of our constitutional democracy. To reiterate, Honourable members, the ANC stands proud of the Constitution of our country and what it stands for, not only because we have been the biggest driving force behind its development, but also because we genuinely believe that it is good for our country and its people. That commitment is not about to change. For we are a responsible leadership that takes seriously the responsibility that the majority of South Africans have entrusted to us. Unlike some of the members in this House, the ANC does not have the luxury to be casual and self serving about matters involving the governance of this country.
During his address, President Mbeki referred to the fact that together as South Africans, we have been successful in forging a united and reconciled nation. That we are indeed, in the main, a nation of a humble and forgiving people. He said and I quote:
"Over many decades, we have seen that these masses would always refuse to turn racist simply because they were subjected to cruel, racist rule. ..They thought and acted as they did, because they knew better than those who had been certified learned, that it was only a just peace that would end their despair and bring into their lives the sense of hope that would make it possible for them to bear the pain of hunger until the day came when they would no longer be hungry."
14 years before our President made this statement, the then President of the ANC Oliver Regionald Tambo had this to say on his return to his land of birth after years of exile:
"We are, accordingly, inviting all those who love peace, prosperity and freedom for all, to join in the struggle that is bound to result in the liberty of every single South African. In particular, we urge our white compatriots to join hands with us. Let us act now to salvage our country from sinking into a bottomless pit. The time has come for us to make a clean break with the past, and begin with the difficult task of healing the wounds that we afflicted upon ourselves for so long.
We urge all those harbouring doubts about a democratic future, to take courage in the knowledge that the generosity of the oppressed is matched only by their passionate hatred of the oppression of fellow human beings. Working together as fellow South Africans, we have it within our power to transform this country into the land of plenty for all where the nightmare of Apartheid will just be a faint memory of the past."
Madam Speaker, again, there are some in our country who take very lightly the commitment of our people to forgive and to rebuild a South African nation. Some in fact take for granted this enormous achievement when they play down the benefits that our country has enjoyed in the area of reconciliation and nation building, as a result of the inception of this Government.
So forgiving are we that at times we deliberately shy away and avoid telling the horror stories of our history to our children for fear that they might harbour bitterness and indulge in recrimination which we do not need in this country. The challenge is the reconstruction of our country and nation building. It is for us to instil a sense of patriotism in our children, thereby building a future generation that will defend and advance and deepen our democracy. Ensuring that South Africa never again reverts back to the amount of hatred and human injustice that some of us experienced.
This sense of caring for each other has also been translated into our implementation of Government programmes and policies, including the Batho-pele practices.
Hounourable speaker, despite the many achievements in the area of development of rural women and their communities, several challenges will face government in the next decade. Key amongst these will be the fact that, although democracy has brought about a lot of benefits for our people, many of them still do not have access to these, mostly because they are not aware of these benefits. If the intention of government is to find practical expression, then everybody who stands to benefit from programmes and policies of government should be helped to do so.
Although these programmes and policies are making real visible change in the lives of many women, the reality also holds true that many are still poor and still lack access to the most basic of infrastructure and services. We therefore need to take seriously the commitment by government to use the next ten years to reduce the number of these people.
We have a real challenge to make sure that those programmes that are already in implementation are sustained or supported by other new ones so that we do not create a revolving door situation where our gains are reversed. In this way we would have provided a response to the directive given to us by the many women such as UmamaEpiannete Mbeki during the people's Forums and the Imbizo, and we will have lived true to the assertion that indeed our people are governing.
I thank you