Mr Speaker, since the effects of the financial crisis have rolled onto our shores, South Africa has sustained its first credit rating downgrade. Public debt has doubled and we struggle with the double deficit. Our state wage bill is too high and service delivery protests are the norm.
Despite all this, Goldman Sachs has reported how better off South Africa is after 20 years of democracy. Koos Bekker reminded us that more wealth was created in these 20 years than in the previous 300 years.
The big question now is: What will the next 20 years be like?
Luckily we do have the National Development Plan, NDP. Let's all embrace this plan and campaign hard. Which party will implement it after the elections next year, because it will be all about implementation?
Irvin Jim's comments on the National Development Plan, that the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa will not campaign for the ANC unless the NDP is scrapped, is a direct attack on the ANC. They want the NDP out of the ANC manifesto. His attacks will add to the already bad tensions in the ruling alliance. When Gwede Mantashe referred to this alliance as a "holy trinity", he surely could not have been including the rather unholy Mr Jim, of whom the National Planning Commission secretariat said in a rare statement: "Mr Jim suffers from an infantile disorder that manifests as an acute aversion to anything rational." I see no holiness in that trinity. [Applause.]