Presiding officer, let me take this opportunity to greet the officials of the EFF, commissars, fighters and the supporters in nine provinces at large. Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Amilcar Cabral also says:
Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.
That is what he says; don't quote him when it suits you. Minister Patel, in fact, for the last 25 years the ANC government has dismally failed to develop and industrialise our economy. Instead, the economy is shrinking and jobs are being lost. Yet, you continue to believe that if we encourage Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, our economy will strengthen.
I am here to tell you that this will fail, as it has failed for a quarter of a century. The neo-liberal order on which this government has based its economic policy is failing, and the best example of this failure is your National Development Plan, NDP. The whole NDP idea was based on an annual Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of 5,4%, and during your decade of nothing, we barely grew the economy past the 1,5% mark.
You said to us by 2020, unemployment will be 14%, we are at a tipping point of 27,6% today. You promised to increase employment from 13 million in 2010 to 24 million in 2030. Yet, nine years later, only 3 million more South Africans are employed. We are not surprised by the failure of the NDP, because you Minister, as the communist should understand the basics of economics.
Opening the markets, privatisation and foreign investment have never developed an economy.
Setswana:
Wena le Blade lo makomonisi a a bokoa.
English:
These policies only fatten the pockets of white monopoly capital at their stooges in government. That is why despite all the promises capital made to the President last year at the Job Summit, we are seeing a blood bath of job losses across all sectors of the economy, with Multichoice, mines, banks, retail shops, and restaurants retrenching workers who are the poor masses of this country. To give you an idea of why the economy is so underdeveloped you have to understand the colonial economy.
Colonies were designed for the extraction of raw materials and the exploitation of labour, with those materials being exported in the form of cheap raw goods, and then being imported as expensive finished products. So much of what this imports and consumes are produced somewhere else, if we had a proper industrial policy and plan, not this useless NDP, South Africans would be consuming and exporting finished industrial products.
We import billions of rands worth of smart phones, laptops, tabs, and computers, but none of the parts are produced in our beloved South Africa. We import machinery parts, rubber tyres, medical equipment, printing machines, sugar, shoes and coins, to name a few. We are one of the few countries in possession of rare earths which are critical to the production of microchips and other high-end technologies.
Why are we not processing these minerals and turning them into finished products? Why are we still importing things as simple as toothpicks?
Setswana:
Gompieno jaana. re itukula ka seitukulo se se tlodileng melapo e le mentsi.
English:
The answer is, because your government does the bidding of white monopoly capital. We need to change our industrial policy strategy and focus on decentralised industrial strategy with the capacity to produce enough imports and take advantage of existing technology.
We must establish multiple Special Economic Zones, SEZs, in various regions of South Africa with tax benefits on a strict condition that investors create real sustainable and decent jobs.
Government must also use state procurement to ensure that a minimum of 80% of all the goods and services procured by the state including all state- owned companies like Eskom, Transnet, SA Airways, SAA, Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, PRASA, municipalities, hospitals, and schools are produced locally. As the EFF we are also going to table a Private Member's Bill to amend the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act to ensure that a minimum of 50% of all South Africa's mineral resources are beneficiated locally, processed and add value to the economy.
Minerals extracted in South Africa must be beneficiated. When it comes to shelf space, let us ensure that the majority of food in our retail shops are produced and processed locally. A certain
percentage of shelf-space must dedicated by locally produced products. Let us look at a rural development plan and priorities the growth in the industries in predominantly rural and neglected provinces such as the Northern Cape, where I come from and Limpopo, where my President comes from.
Our rural economy offers huge economic potential, but this government remains trapped by apartheid spatial development and planning. We also need industrial policy and programmes that integrate our economy with the rest of the African continent. There needs to be a continental wide exchange, of goods, services, ideas and peoples.
We also need to use our collective power for production and consumption to guarantee the development of the African continent. Finally, no industrial capacity can be built with unstable electricity supply. That is why Eskom needs to be strengthened and Jamnadas needs to be fired, that man is a constitutional delinquent and is purposefully collapsing Eskom so that it can be privatised.
Minister, the EFF rejects Budget 31 25 and 34, because the neoliberal economic policies and of this government have failed our people. Now with my two minutes left, I wish to take this
opportunity and wish the EFF a happy sixth anniversary that we will be celebrating this coming weekend in KaNyamazane in Mpumalanga where hon Jomo comes from. I thank you.