Chairperson of the NCOP, Comrade President and Comrade Deputy President, hon members, the ANC I am a member of has never assigned any one out of its structures to be its spokesperson. No one has a right to anoint himself as a guardian of ANC traditions and its conference resolutions. [Applause.]
As a tried and tested mass party of the revolution with accumulated fighting experience of over 107 years, the ANC has never been found wanting in finding solutions to its own challenges the problem faced in society. As a discipline force of the left, we have never chosen the rosy path of shortcuts, easy solutions to complex problems neither pondering on the popular sentiments with unrealistic solutions. We will resist that temptation even today.
The overwhelming majority of the people of South Africa voted in the national and provincial elections. They voted the ANC and
the President Cyril Ramaphosa at the head of it thus reaffirming their confidence to his leadership an uninterrupted service to the course of the revolution in South Africa.
Hon Chair, this state of the nation address takes place after the renewal of the democratic mandate of the ANC to lead a process of fundamental change and transformation in our country. It has captured the fundamental aspiration of our overwhelming majority of our people as articulated in the 2019 election manifesto of the ANC.
Contrary to some false narrative peddled by some in this House, the priorities identified by the President in his state of the nation address represent continuity in change in the uninterrupted efforts of the ANC to build a better future for all. These priorities are anchored on the vision of the Freedom Charter, the 1989 Harare Declaration, the Ready to Govern and other policy positions of the ANC adopted by various conferences.
Our 2019 election manifesto and government 25 Year Review has detailed our success stories over the last 25 years and the challenges that lie ahead. As a leading party of the revolution, we have drawn many hard lessons on the choices we have made, their implementation and successes and failures. This has emboldened us to be more focused rigorous in our implementation and monitoring of our plans as mandated by overwhelming majority of South Africans.
We will do this drawing from the accumulated experience of the last 25 years which has enriched our insights and wisdom on fundamental task of governance. Our experience of governance cannot be matched by any party in this House, although we will continue to humble ourselves by welcoming constructive contribution of every party that shares our vision on fundamental aspects transformation.
As the President has pointed out, we do this mindful of the harsh global and domestic economic conditions which continue to limit our capacity to accomplish our strategic goals at a scale
and tempo of our own choice. This calls for greater efficiency and prudent on the management of our limited resources.
We are further emboldened by the President who has demonstrated resilience and capacity to translate our policy priorities into action for building a capable and ethical state without fail over the last 16 months of his presidency.
The President has established various inquiries to look into the governance of some of our critical institutions like SA Revenue Service, the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions and the Public Investment Commission alongside Judicial Commission of Inquiry into allegations of state capture.
These Inquiries continue to make serious breakthroughs that have restored the confidence of our people. The establishment by the Hawks of the National Clean Audit Task Team in the municipalities continue to disrupt the comfort zone of rent seeking and corrupt patronage network that they have been looting municipal finances. Whilst we respect the fundamental constitutional principle of presumption of innocence until
proven guilty by a court of law, we salute these actions by the security establishment for the recent spate of arrests of municipal officials suspected of corruption and fraud across the country. This is indeed the new dawn in action, Mr President.
As this debate takes place on the 25th anniversary of our constitutional democracy, it imposes immense duty upon us to pause and take stock of the lessons of the past and efficacy and effectiveness of the architecture of our democratic state in fulfilling the strategic tasks we have set for ourselves. This we should do not out of intuition but on the basis of the concrete lessons of the past 25 years.
The abiding lesson of the past 25 years is that the people and the people alone are the decisive factor critical for the victory of the national democratic revolution. It is against this background that the ANC from 1994 till to date has always been paying high premium on the welfare and the needs of our people.
As demonstrated in the 25 Year Review, we have integrated the fragmented education system by creating one nonracial and nonracial education department with one curriculum for all. Today, South African children are not denied education access to education because of their socioeconomic conditions through such policy intervention such as no fee paying schools, National School Nutrition Programme and scholar transport.
It is in this regard that we celebrate the success of Gauteng and the Free State Province for over a number of years for being leading provinces even with the matric results in our country. [Applause.]
Our social wage has expanded significantly over the last 25 years and today covers over more than 17 million beneficiaries.
The provision of free health care services to the poor, children and pregnant women is among key policies that has restored the dignity of our people. Today, South Africa stand counted amongst few countries with improved life expectancy and best practice
model on the issue of HIV and Aids pandemic despite the challenges that remains.
The recent passing of anti-monopoly legislation by Parliament will go a long way in deepening the radical socioeconomic transformation by ensuring that our economy does not resides in the hands of the few elites. We reaffirm our commitment to industrialisation as a sustainable path way towards sustainable jobs. It is in this regards that townships are such as Dimbaza, Mdantsane, Botshabelo, Quaqua, Kanyamazane and many others will benefit through massive manufacturing that will produce finished products.
According to our Constitution, South Africa is a single sovereign democratic state with three spheres of government that are constituted as national, provincial and local government that are distinct, interrelated and interdependent. The Constitution further enjoins these three spheres of government to co-operate with one another in advancing national development agenda.
In pursuance of this constitutional imperative, our government has established robust systems and structures of intergovernmental relation, the efficacy and effectiveness of these systems and structures can only be measured by the impact they make in forging the integrated co-operative governance and mitigating the current uneven development and capacity amongst provinces and municipalities.
The National Development Plan is very instructive on the dual challenges of duplication and fragmented planning across the three spheres of government which most documented research attributes to poor service delivery and development. Mr President, this therefore makes it more compelling for this Sixth Administration to pay high premium on integrated co- operative governance system.
Our ground breaking efforts in this regard will surely ensure that there is no child who daily walks more than five kilometres to school, no indigent family on the housing waiting list for more than ten years, no money allocated for housing is returned to Treasury because the municipality has not allocated sites for
building and other challenges associated with fragmented planning.
Our systems of provincial and local government are located at the coal face of service delivery, development and participatory democracy.
Over the past years, our systems of provincial and local government have undergone fundamental changes and reconfiguration to adequately respond to the development challenges facing our communities. Amongst the catalytic economic infrastructure development that has been built in our townships, including transport infrastructure, building roads in pursuance for local economic development.
The 2010 Football World Cup hosted by South Africa will go down the annals of our history as one of the decisive moments in the spatial distribution of world class commercial sports infrastructure to all nine provinces. This has increased tourist attraction of most of the provinces beyond Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The accomplishment of these high level world class infrastructure projects have demonstrated the capacity and potential of provincial government and municipalities as critical agents of change in the transformation of development and economic landscape of our country. There are many exciting lessons to learn from the Township Economy Model by Gauteng Province with all its challenges. Key among this is the township economy is feasible and can be achieved.
To do this requires bold and conscious action. This should include leveraging of our development finance institutions to have a conscious bias in investing in township economy, translating our commitment to localisation of production, procurement of goods and services into concrete plan and reorientation our spatial development framework to consciously locate more business and commercial sites in the townships.
Key to the clarion call by the President which flows from the National Development Plan is the partnership among different sectors of society, our communities and government in pushing back the frontiers of poverty, unemployment and inequality. This
partnership presupposes structured dialogue, reflection and collective action on the identified priorities. As the systems of our democratic governance located closer to the communities, the provincial and local government are best placed to occupy forward trenches in the facilitation of public participation.
This should not only be limited to legislative process but should also include the monitoring of the impact of government policy to our communities. We must also remodel our public participation framework to be more exciting and inspiring to draw meaningful involvement of the widest possible section of our communities.
The more the disjuncture and fragmentation between three spheres of government the more the capacity of the democratic state to fulfil its task is weakened. This point is succinctly captured by the ANC conference resolution, and I quote:
The more we build a developmental state, the more we create conditions for integrated cooperative governance system. And the more we strengthen the cooperative governance
system, the more we create conditions for a developmental state.
The story of our last 25 years is the story of a foundation build to create an integrated co-operative governance system both at an executive and legislative levels of the state. The NCOP Taking Parliament to the People is a single most strategic intervention where three spheres of government are brought together under one roof in conversation with our people.
The key question that South Africans will seek an answer to is how braced are these strategic initiatives to monitor the strategic tasks of the Sixth Administration as outlined in your state of the nation address, Mr President. This is the critical question that should inform planning of Parliament and legislatures in this Sixth Democratic Parliament.
The planning should reorient the legislative sector to be more activist and people centred as articulated in the strategic vision of Parliament. Thank you, Chairperson. [Time expired.] [Applause.]