Hon Chair of the NCOP, hon Speaker, His Excellency the President of RSA, hon Members, Madam Speaker of the NCOP. The debate of SONA takes place at a very critical time in the life of our country Eskom has announced stage 3 of load shedding, a very painful situation indeed. There is nothing that supersedes service- delivery. That is water, sanitation, electricity, housing, roads etc. These are bread and butter issues that control the life/blood of our country. The life of citizens is nothing without service delivery.
Hon Deputy Speaker, poverty and unemployment are so high in our country; hence a radical approach to creating jobs and minimizing unemployment should be high on the agenda of government.
The outages that started to occur over weekend have already started to affect the entire population of our country, even businesses are severely affected.
The NFP welcomes the President's pronouncement around the early childhood education. However, we do not want these crches and pre-schools where our children merely clap hands and jump and don't get any form of education. We are not