House Chair, in his first state of the nation address since going to the country, for his own electoral mandate, President Ramaphosa shared with us and the nation, his dreams. Let me be clear, there was nothing wrong with dreams, provided they have a plan, for dreams without plans remain fantasies. The President is also not the only one, who dreams. So while you, Mr President were dreaming of the fantastical cities of Ramakhandla, [Laughter.]! with its bullet train whizzing by, and his Brezhnev era state-owned entities running the show.
The young school leaver in Limpopo dreams of finding a job. The factory worker in Alberton dreams of the last time he had a decent job, the sick person lying in a hospital in Kimberley dreams of proper care and just getting better, the resident in Helenvale who dreams of a safe street free of bullets, gangsters and drug peddlers. The mother in Mpumalanga dreams of just one night when she can send her children to bed with a full tummy. For it is only in these dreams, Mr President, that our citizens find temporary refuge from the woken horror and nightmare of unemployment, crime, poverty and struggle that is the daily life that is the daily life in existence for far too many of our citizens in this country. [Applause.]
For successive elections, these citizens have placed their dreams at the feet of successive ANC administrations- like the lines of Irish playwright, William Butler Yeats, they have said:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
and yet successive ANC administrations have done exactly the opposite, they have stamped out opportunity, they have crushed the dreams and they have robbed the very lifeblood of survival. After the wasted decade of the Zuma years, and now with your own electoral mandate under your belt, what was needed more than any thing was a good dose of brass tacks, hard reality and bold reforms. [Applause.]
It's what the nation was desperate to hear and it's what we were desperate to hear last Thursday and what we were desperate to hear today. Now is the time for action, the clarion call to service, the rallying cry against corruption, the decisive demolishing of the roadblocks to growth and prosperity. Instead, we got dreams and virtuous ends with ten year sell by dates- basically you say to us Mr President for the next ten years: "don't call me, I'll call you." Ten years? We don't have ten years, we don't exist in some utopian dream in which we can fluffily float for a decade, and we are in the nightmare of immediacy. We are in a race against the clock to get our country working and get our people back to work.
Dreams without plans are merely fantasies, and boy we did we hear a lot of those today! I will start with the foe communist that we have within our ranks. I see he's been delegated now to the NCOP, as the colleagues in the NA couldn't wait to get rid of him. They are horrified; he has popped up in the NCOP to terrorise us once a year at that state of the nation address once again. [Laughter.]
Frankly, disingenuously it says to us that the Zondo Commission was gifted to the Country by the ANC, rubbish, and absolute rubbish! It was the results of the Public Protector report which made it as a finding. [Applause.]. Nothing to do with you hon Carrim, nothing, but a like walking, talking version of Pravda, he carried on with the ranked dishonesty that has became the South African Communist Party. Is it amazing that he can stand here with his hands in his pockets, picking on the DA, picking on the EFF and tearing our manifestos into pieces. Where was your manifesto at this election? [Laughter.]! You never have the courage to put your ideas before the country and let them test it. You are a coward at heart under the petticoat of the ANC. [Applause.].
You talk about identity crisis, well goodness me, if the DA is got an identity crisis hon Carrim, you guys have got schizophrenia on Olympian proportions. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zum, Jacob Zuma, JZ, Magashule faction, the Zuma faction, radically economic transformation and the new dawn, every one of them. You guys can't even get together in room and have coherent conversation and isn't amazing, it criticizes the policies of the free market, the policies of the market, well the people in Venezuela, 3,4 million of them aren't running away from our policies, hon Carrim they are running, they are running away from yours. [Applause.] [Interjection.]