26 May 2004
Madame Speaker
Hon. President
Hon. Members
Comrades
Yesterday the overwhelming majority of Members and parties in this House welcomed the vision and programme contained in the State of the Nation Address presented to Parliament by the President of the Republic.
They committed themselves to being part of building a people's contract to create work and fight poverty and the creation of a better life for all.
A minority proclaimed they too agree with this vision. After quoting a few goals from the President's address they stated that there is agreement about the major goals our society needs to reach. They stated that there is agreement on ends but disagreement on the means.
They then proceeded to advance perspectives and positions which indicate fundamental opposition to the goal of creating a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society.
They chose instead to articulate a well-known agenda that seeks to defend the privileges of those who have historically enjoyed privilege by opposing all major legislative and policy interventions to deal with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. They try to distort and falsify the history and nature of our society and the struggle fundamentally to change this society and also the nature the movement that has led this struggle. They do this in the hope of undermining the fundamental social transformation of our country.
This is the agenda that Mr. Tony Leon was advancing yesterday in his reply to the President's State of the Nation Address.
Mr. Leon spoke of the need for debate.
The enormous challenges confronting our nation demand that we debate with humility and honest intent. Debate must always have as its central objective the creation of a better life for all by dealing with the terrible legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
According to Mr. Leon one of the areas of disagreement on means, which in fact turns out to be a disagreement on goals, is the role of the state.
Mr. Leon states that, "The ANC believes that the state should guide South Africa's economic development, and virtually everything else…. In contrast, the DA believes that the people-and the private sector, the faith-based initiatives, and the non-governmental organisations-make better choices and deliver better results than the government alone."
He goes on to suggest that the state's role should be limited to the tasks of protecting the lives of its citizens and intervening as a measure of last resort to make slightly more bearable the dehumanizing burden of poverty.
Mr. Leon tries to characterize this as a disagreement on means. The true meaning of Mr. Leon's perspective is however best described by the President in a speech given in this House in June 1999. On that occasion the President said:
"In our specific situation, what this means is that those who are fittest to survive will survive. Those who are best able will qualify on the basis of merit. Those whose race defined them as sub-human must now have no access to state support, which state must, after all, retreat to allow those who have the means to survive and dominate, to dominate. This is the soulless secular theology which indeed defines the DP as an opposition party. It has nothing to do with theories of democracy."
Overcoming the legacy of colonialism and apartheid will not be accomplished by market forces. This task requires a comprehensive programme of reconstuction and development in which the state and all sectors of society need to act in partnership to ensure the implementation of such a programme. The state will need to play a leading role this endeavor.
The ANC has consistently called for partnership between the state and all sectors of society and the active involvement of the masses of our people. In each successive State of the Nation Address over the past five years the President has made and elaborated upon different aspects of this call.
In June 1999 the President spoke of, "…the enormity of the challenge we face to succeed in creating the caring society we have spoken of."
He went on to say that:
"For this reason this is not a task that can be carried out by the government alone. The challenges of the reconstruction and development of our society into one which guarantees human dignity, faces the entirety of our people.
"It is a national task that calls for the mobilization of the whole nation into united people's action, into a partnership with government for progressive change and a better life for all, for a common effort to build a winning nation.
"The Government therefore commits itself to work in a close partnership with all our people, inspired by the call - Faranani! - to ensure that we draw on the energy and genius of the nation to give birth to something that will surely be new, good and beautiful."
Then again in February 2000 the President said:
"I would like to take this opportunity once more to emphasise the importance we attach to the strategic objective of building the partnership between the public and the private sectors.
"We will therefore further intensify our links and co-operation with the private sector for the successful implementation of the various economic initiatives we have mentioned.
"Similarly, we are very encouraged by the response of our people as a whole that we should transform ourselves into a nation at work."
Since 1994 the government led by the ANC, with the involvement and support of the overwhelming majority of South Africans, black and white, has ensured that:
The other area that Mr. Leon oddly characterizes as a disagreement over means is the need to transform society. After attacking the necessary role of the state in dealing with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid Mr. Leon proceeds to attack what he calls the ANC's policy of transformation.
He says, "The DA agrees on the need for radical and fundamental change. But the policy of transformation, as the ANC defines it, aims at something more. The goal of this transformation is to achieve "representivity"-a state of affairs in which every institution, public and private, reflects the demographics of South Africa as a whole."
If Mr. Leon is suggesting that we should perpetuate apartheid by agreeing to a situation where some institutions, public and private, are left to be unrepresentative then clearly we disagree on more than just means. How does one argue for radical and fundamental change in our context and at the same time oppose attempts to make society as representative as possible? Who is Mr. Leon suggesting should remain unrepresented and in which institutions?
Mr. Leon goes on to argue that: "There is simply no way that the government can meet all of its delivery objectives and pursue hard-line racial transformation at the same time. The public service cannot deliver if it loses experienced civil servants." Is Mr. Leon suggesting that experienced civil servants capable of implementing delivery objectives only come in one gender and one colour? Clearly we are disagreeing on more than means.
Mr. Leon says that transformation goes against the principle of non-racialism. He defines non-racialism to mean that we judge a person "not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character." This is to distort and pervert a principle that guided millions of South Africans in their struggle against colonialism and apartheid.
Non-racialism must entail a comprehensive and proactive programme to deal with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid that defined and treated some as super- and others as sub-human on the basis on their race.
We must accept that it will be difficult to avoid judging each other by the colour of our skins for as long as some of our skins reflect wealth and privilege and others reflect poverty and under-developement.
Again we make the point that we must debate with humility and honest intent. One would have expected a less strident approach from a former member of the apartheid army and the apartheid parliament when he decides to lecture the sons and daughters of Dube, Luthuli, Dadoo and Fischer on non-racialism.
Related to his attempts to minimize the role of the state and need for thorough-going transformation Mr. Leon says: "We must remember that the struggle for freedom and equality is not, and was never, waged on behalf of "masses". It is waged on behalf of human beings."
He does not want to recognize that individual human beings were advantaged and disadvantaged not as individuals but as members of certain races, genders and classes.
Black Economic Empowerment is also described as a disagreement over means.
Mr. Leon asserts that: "The President also spoke about measures to promote broad-based black economic empowerment. With respect, none of these proposals dealt directly with the question of how to increase ownership and entrepreneurship among millions of black people."
We must debate with honest intent. The President referred to the Apex Fund dedicated to the extension of micro-credit, to the Agricultural Credit Scheme, the merger of Ntsika and the National Manufacturing Advisory Centres to name a few.
Mr. Leon says: "For example, Mr Tokyo Sexwale made national headlines when he made a deal to buy 10 percent of ABSA, worth about R4-billion. But everyone forgot about the tens of thousands of ABSA employees, 65 percent of whom are black, who were only given 1 percent of the bank as part of an employee share ownership scheme."
Mr. Leon does not seem to find it strange that in a country where black people constitute 85 percent of the population it is cause for a headline when a black person buys 10 percent of a bank. Surely this is what we should be debating.
Mr. Leon then links Mr. Sexwale's purchase of shares to the fact that employees at ABSA only received one percent of shares. We have never heard this point being raised in relation to the thousands of similar transactions involving white business people. Perhaps Mr. Leon could explain exactly what point he is trying to make.
This brings us back to the unfortunate reality that in the eyes of some to be black and wealthy is somehow inherently morally suspect.
Clearly we differ on more than means.
Mr. Leon deplores and decries the fact that the ANC decides to deploy members who are committed creating a better society to positions in which they do just that. Mr. Leon warns that: "Deployment is undermining the integrity of institutions that are meant to be independent. From the SABC, to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, to the boards of major corporations, ANC cadres have risen to positions of dominance. The dangers of such a concentration of power in the hands of a ruling party-any ruling party-are clear. A society that is controlled by a small group of people loses its robustness. It cannot respond to challenge or change."
Again the need to debate with honest intent. Mr. Leon seems to forget that 70 percent of South African voters voted for the ANC. It would indeed be a very small group controlling society if all ANC members and supporters were excluded from holding positions of responsibility.
Furthermore Mr. Leon does not seem to find anything wrong with the fact that there are groups in our society who own wealth, wield power and influence far out of proportion to their numbers. However, he sees any attempt to challenge the power and influence of these small groups as part of a sinister "transformation agenda."
Mr. Leon states that: "Today, tolerance is more important than ever before. Today, South Africa is living with a curious paradox: as the economic gap between black and white is shrinking, the political gap between black and white is growing."
What is the basis for this extraordinary statement? What is Mr. Leon's yardstick for measuring this so-called political gap between black and white? Compared to ten and more years ago we live in a constitutional democracy in which all citizens enjoy the same political rights. We have had three democratic national and provincial elections and two local government elections. Our political institutions are broadly representative of the racial and gender make-up of our society.
It is true the DA has tried its best to create such a gap by trying to polarize communities with scare tactics and Fight Back slogans. But the outcome of the last election shows that voters are tiring of this approach.
Throughout his speech Mr Leon adopts a two party Westminister paradigm. He refers consistently to "Government and Opposition", "ANC and DA" as if it were the most natural thing to juxtapose a seventy percent mandate with a twelve percent mandate. The existence of all other parties in this House who combined represent an eighteen percent mandate is all but ignored. Significantly, he makes no single reference to his partners in the "Coalition for Change" that was supposed to have secured a thirty percent mandate in the last election. We must debate with humility.
Mr. Leon asserts that, "The handshake President Mbeki and I shared on the occasion of his re-election one month ago should be the starting point for a new era in South African politics." Clearly, we have a very different understanding of what constitutes an era.
In conclusion. The President has put before Parliament a clear programme of action for building a peoples contract to create work and fight poverty and the creation of a better life for all. It is up to us a elected representatives of the people to make sure that we play an active role in making sure that this programme is implemented and that we contribute to creating a better life for all.