Hon Chairperson, the Department of Public Works could arguably be the most strategic department in terms of driving a developmental agenda in this country. The EFF is of the firm view that the state should build internal capacity to construct and maintain infrastructure such as roads, railways,
dams and basic infrastructure such as schools, houses, hospitals and recreational facilities.
This will ensure sustained development and offer our people secure jobs. The Department of Public Works should be at the centre of such state-led infrastructural development. At the moment, the Department of Public Works is currently the largest state owner in the country, holding over 5 million hectares of land. Of this land, over 1,5 million hectares are vacant, and not used productively for anything.
Rights to this land must immediately be redistributed to the black people across the country who remain landless and vulnerable to evictions every day by the ANC government. Remember what happened in Alexandra. The department of Public Works must also do an audit for all the government houses, and report on where the rentals from these houses go. The entire suburb of West Bank in King Williams Town is made up of government owned houses, built by the erstwhile homeland government of the Ciskei.
Most of these houses, Minister, have been fraudulently transferred to the ownership of ANC politicians. These houses must be taken back, wait, and be given the people who need houses the most, not these leeches who live on sucking public funds. We also call for the immediate permanent employment of the hundreds of thousands of Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, workers, whose terms of employment only perpetuate their suffering and vulnerability, because some of them don't even know their job description.
These EPWP workers must be immediately put to use to build roads, repair dilapidated schools and hospitals, on a permanent basis, with lull benefits and be paid a living wage. The other reason why we say let's do away with the EPWP, it's because municipalities are using EPWP to replace trained and experienced workers who have been working in these municipalities tor years, and now are being replaced by exploited and poorly paid workers.
If ours has to be a developmental, people oriented state, we must build internal capacity to perform state functions without outsourcing these function to a corrupt clique of white-owned
companies or those owned by the comprador bourgeoisie that is found in the ANC at the moment. To this end, we have called and continue to call for the establishment of a state-owned construction company, a state cement company, and a state-owned housing company.
The government must build its own buildings and stop paying inflated prices on rentals. A strong Public Works Department should necessarily have political power and technical capacity to give developmental mandates to their state-owned companies, such as the Construction Industry Development Board, to fast track transformation and ensure broad-based skilling of young and black professionals in the sector. We have a crisis at Independent Development Trust, IDT.
As is, the budget does not offer any significant change to the way public works has worked over the past 25 years. It fails to unleash the true developmental potential this department has, and deprives the nation of the massive benefits that can be accrued were this department conceptualised as a truly developmental department that it should be.
Minister, we can assure you here free of charge that one of the most important fights you are going to have with us this term is for the ill- conceived Expropriation Bill that has been championed by the antiland expropriation Deputy Minister, Jeremy Cronin. Right in the middle of the debate, the amendments to the Constitution to allow for land expropriation, the department under the leadership of Cronin decided to release their draft to circumvent the process of amending the Constitution.
Why would the department want to waste public resources undergoing public participation processes for a Bill whose content and form are dependent on Section 25 of the Constitution? The proposals contained in that Bill which seemingly categorises the type of land which could be expropriated with minimal compensation, are only an attempt to ensure that the amendments proposed become superficial.
It is despicable that a professed Marxist would want to maintain the current, unsustainable manner of landholding in this country. The Bill must be shelved, Minister and await the
amendment of section 25. On that note, Minister, we reject the budget. [Applause.]