... [Inaudible.] ... strategic, but nevertheless. We welcome the EFF and the IFP to the House. Perhaps it would be good if your voters realised that you don't participate, but nevertheless ... [Interjections.]
Hon Chairperson and my fellow South Africans, allow me to point out that the members of the Government Employees Pension Fund, especially the pensioner members, are wise people. The pensioner members of the Government Employees Pension Fund have spent their working lives wisely saving up for their twilight years. If these are the wise people, my
dear colleagues, I must then ask you: Who then are the fools? The fools are the ones who want to use the money, wisely saved up by working and pensioner members, to gulp it down on wasteful projects, such as investments in AYO Technology Solutions, amongst other projects.
We welcome the ruling by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission that the PIC must recover the R4,3 billion plus interest irregularly invested in AYO Technology Solutions. The offending clause in the Public Investment Corporation Amendment Bill states that the PIC must seek to invest in what on the surface would seem to be nice, heart-warming projects, such as those that create and protect jobs, and those that industrialise the economy, amongst other things. Yes, that is what it says.
The real danger of this clause is that it is an initial step towards the introduction of prescribed assets. That is an ANC position that was apparently slipped into the ANC 2019 election manifesto, for those of you who might not even know that. [Interjections.] The ANC manifesto states that the ANC will investigate the introduction of prescribed assets of financial institutions ... funds to unlock resources for investments in socioeconomic development.
It is exactly this political pressure that has got the PIC into such trouble about the so-called developmental projects, such as investments in AYO Technology Solutions, that bring no returns and simply do not have the value of the massive amount of money that has been poured into them by the