Deputy Chairperson, hon Ministers, hon MECs, colleagues, friends and comrades, I rise on behalf of the ANC in this House to give my unconditional support to this Budget Vote. It is a budget that hopes to turn the tide for our people. The ANC-led government is the only organisation that can and will address their needs because we have a plan. We have built millions of Reconstruction and Development Programme houses for the needy, although we still have much to do. That is because the list is long and there are always new entrants.
We want to applaud the initiative that would address the gap market. Let me just repeat what the President said during the state of the nation address, when he mentioned that a citizen requested this from him, saying that we needed this kind of fund. We learnt from reliable sources that that citizen is now living in his own house, financed by this gap market fund. Only the ANC can do that.
We also request that you address the issue of RDP houses built in places like Langa; houses that were completed a long time ago but are not occupied.
We will adequately respond to the needs of our people because we have been there. We have experienced living in a shack on hot summer days: When it is hot, the shack is also hot. We have experienced living in a shack on cold winter days: When it is cold, the shack is also cold. We have experienced living in a shack on windy days: On such days, the roofing is often blown off. We have experienced living in a shack on rainy days: Flooding often takes place.
All these misfortunes affect blacks who are poor, unemployed and desperate. We do not need anybody to lecture us on these experiences because we have travelled this road and we have plans and solutions for them. I want to repeat that it is only the ANC-led government that will address these problems because we have been there. [Applause.]
I am not sure whether the hon Groenewald has ever slept in a shack or was raised in a shack. [Interjections.] The advice I can give him is to sell that big house of his, to show patriotism and to go and build RDP houses for people in the North West. With the remainder of the money, he should go and build a shack and stay in it. Then he would not talk as he has just done. [Interjections.]
I want to tell you my story of when I first arrived here in Cape Town. I was travelling with my family to Somerset West when, near the airport, I saw a huge village of shacks on my right-hand side. One could build a township as big as Soweto there. I told my family that, whether we liked it or not, we would never address the housing problem during our term. I told them that the process we started would be completed by our children, referring to my son. Little did I know that what I said had an impact on him, because whenever we now pass an informal settlement he will say that that area is not as huge as the one we saw at Khayelitsha and that it is us who will build for those people. Little did I realise that I had planted a revolutionary seed in my son.
Minister, I believe we need to build a strong foundation for our children so that they will complete the journey that we have travelled. In your own words:
It is totally unacceptable that although we provide funds, responsible government entities and certain municipalities fail to even build a simple toilet, while there is still the serious stench of the bucket system in some parts of the country.
That is what you said. I have made my own analysis of the issues that hinder us from aggressively providing houses to our people and I have come to the conclusion that there is a lack of land on which to build houses. You always make provision for funds to build houses but where will municipalities build houses if there is no land? I will come back to the land issue.
The next issue is that of town planning. Most of the municipalities do not have spatial planning policies. How can they build houses when they have not planned for them? Another concern is the issue of infrastructure. How can you build houses if there is no infrastructure and no funds available to put infrastructure in place? We need basic infrastructure like water, sanitation, electricity and roads. The rest will follow.
Allocating the building of housing structures and the use of contractors who do not have the capacity and expertise to build decent houses are also issues. I do not need to emphasise this but let me again refer to what you said. You said the danger was that sometimes we deployed people who did not have the proper skills, and they in turn employed people who did not have expertise.
The last issue is the way in which we monitor the work that we have done. For instance, we do not monitor waiting lists, construction that has been completed and the illegal selling of RDP houses. I know my analysis may not be exhaustive but these are the basics if we want to aggressively address housing problems. We always complain about these challenges but we do not respond to them adequately. I believe I am responding positively to what you have said. Let me refer to what you said. You said that for the sake of delivering services to our people, you would not hesitate to apply intervention measures and take funds from underperforming provinces, transferring them to those that are doing well. Before you resort to such drastic measures, you could perhaps look into my analysis and respond to it.
I want to come back to the land question, as I promised earlier. This year and this month, we commemorate the Natives Land Act, Act 27 of 1913, the law that dehumanised Africans and blacks in general. It deprived us of our human dignity by confining us to isolated, far-flung areas of civilisation; to barren and unproductive land. The land was unsuitable for tilling and habitation.
When you own land, you own wealth, because minerals come from the land. When you own land, you own food and security. When you own land, you own areas of residence. The majority - blacks - were confined to 13% of the land, while the minority - whites - were given an abundance of 87% of productive and fertile land. How can we forget such an inhumane and atrocious infliction on humankind?
I did not tell my son about all these atrocities. He will grow up and discover this for himself. He will be able to complete the journey we have started. Let me conclude my speech by quoting the internationalist Che Guevara, who said, -We must struggle every day so that this love for humanity becomes a reality.| [Applause.]