This is what Professor Wole Soyinka was hoping for. It is therefore very clear Mr President that your marching orders to the Department of Basic Education about tablet computers has to be supported because with a tablet you
can access a wide array of information, perhaps you could even understand that there is no New York in London.
President, philosophers often remind us of a quote attributed to Aristotle that criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing and be nothing. The Bantu people philosophically agree with Aristotle, and we say, "ikhonkotha ehambayo" [It barks to the one moving].
President, you have called on your government and South Africa at large to pull together and "khawuleza" [speed up] in steaming economic growth and prosperity ahead.
But how do we make sense of the 44 out of 10 analyses and the rest of hot air? Plutarch said, it is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome. We share the podium with hon members and hon critics. Instead of people coming up here to light the candle on our discourse we hear a lot of cursing of
the darkness. We cannot attend to the pressing issues of our time without history, logic and injustice.
Mr President, as the Leader of the Official Opposition stood to deliver his usual sermon, turning this podium into a pulpit, I got chills. I got chills because it was like I was listening to the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher herself - Thatcherism, a crude ideological frame of mind that decimated the United Kingdom's economy and social cohesion fabric. Ban, ban, ban and ban the unions, extend private education, reduce or cancel poverty wage protection, sell critical state-owned enterprises, SOEs, and strip collective bargaining constitutional protections yet they claim they believe in our Constitution. We know who buttresses this leader of the shadows in the shadows. Those are not reforms. His reforms are to cut public education. He proposes we stop the national health insurance, NHI, which seeks to give our people access to private hospitals. He says it is expensive. Those are not reforms. What he did not have to say is a cut on social grants. He did not have guts to say that. Warning shots were heard. We know that is what this staunch conservatism ideology leads. We suffered from Thatcherism in this country -
Thatcherism labelled us as terrorists and the cruel apartheid policy.
Those are not reforms; those are deforms! He has a pocket full of seven deforms - deform health care, deform workers' rights, deform public education and deform minimum wage. [Applause.] Mr President, that are not reforms, but deforms and are affirmations of capitalist and a cultural majority the DA truly represents.
Hon members, we owe being here in the seats we are allocated to the wisdom of the masses. The ANC has listened carefully at this debate and most of what we got is 44 out of 10 types of Thatcherist analyses together with a lot of people who truly see themselves as ANC members because all they are consumed with are interparty issues of the ANC. [Applause.] We invite them to rejoin the ANC seeing that is where the heart is and in any event they left the ANC while still nursing on the national democratic revolution. There is yearning for the ANC and the quality of its decisions that they got to be entered into Hansard today. We thank you for that, hon.
Let me hasten to remind the House about the blood that runs in the veins of the ANC. The ANC is not an Africanist movement, the ANC is not a socialist movement, it is not a capitalist movement and it is not a party for one sex over the other or one race dominating the other. We recognise the circumstances of colonialism and the uniqueness or specialty of it in the context of South Africa. We recognise that South Africa is a class- based society with a deep racial segregationist and oppressive past. No party should impose its agenda on the ANC. [Applause.] We are a nonracial organisation that wants to create a united and democratic South Africa.
South Africans are well aware that the ANC has never claimed to be perfect. We have always owned up to our mistakes, we never hide them, we stumble and rise up, and right now we are busy rising up for the sake of our people and we are saying we still have dreams, dreams of a nation that is a beacon of hope and prosperity. Our imperfections are best testified through one of the most quotable quotes of our nation's father, our first democratically elected President Nelson Mandela when he said;
Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got up again. [Applause.]
Mr President, this is not a license to do wrong, but an acknowledgement of our human fallibilities. I am not perfect and the ANC is not perfect, but do we rise up and self-correct? The answer is a full yes. Mr President, your clarity and visionary address has offered us a clear canvass to paint and draw-out executable and realistic plans.
Deputy Chairperson, the ANC's vision document, the Freedom Charter is a document of our dreams. We are committing never to rest until the core of the dreams are realised. It is very curious when we see this document being abused and misused in this House by groups that freelance on their ideological grounding. They sometimes wake up being Sankarists, the next day they are Sobukweist, the next they are Charterist and maybe Marxist too and they may just cut the cake of power with conservative liberals in the halls of Tshwane and Johannesburg. This buffet menu politics is ideological freelancing with
unequal opportunity assortment of the so-called commissars whom the ANC is clearly a boomerang on them.
President, the ANC government in 2012 approved the Prasa strategic plan which included a potential for high speed train. This transformational strategic plan found that indeed a Gauteng to eThekwini and Gauteng to Cape Town high speed rail could be feasible. In this sixth administration we shall commission a full feasibility study and financing models to achieve this collective dream. High speed rail is an economic stimulant, it is a new cities and towns' creator, it is an enabler and multiplier, it is an important tool towards a cleaner air strategy and indeed in speeding up our intended transitioning from road to rail and from air to rail.
Mr President, hon member's listening skills failed them while listening to your state of the nation address. You said, about public rail transport, we want a South Africa that has prioritised its rail network. No South African should have a problem with an introduction of rail network to Musina and Buffalo City as you said in your address. You committed to
making public transport and all rail a mode of choice for all commuters in this country. Ours is to make sure that Prasa is reliable and safe. We shall achieve this and Prasa will be back on track.
As the secretary-general of the ANC after our unbanning together with our stalwarts, you rallied the nation behind a vision of a free, united and prosperous South Africa - a vision of a society where all citizens are equal before the law and have equal access to opportunities for employment, education, arts and sports. It is a vision grounded on the ANC's national democratic...[Interjections.]