Chairperson, it is difficult to talk after having heard these brilliant rhetoricians speaking in this House today. Honesty, they simply made good speeches. Everything that I could have said has been said by all the delegates here. There was excellent preparation. I do not know whether it is our delegates who are so good, or whether it is the work done in the provinces that is so good. Perhaps it is both. It must be both. [Interjections.] Nonetheless, I extend my compliments on this wonderful debate.
I think all the aspects have been covered. I will only react to very few things, because of the hour of the day. Dr Matime said something very important. She said this was a Bill for Africans, made by Africans. I want to take my cue from there and ask what the heart of the matter is. Why will this Bill work or not work? What is the ground for this type of thing?
This type of legislation on meat and on food comes from very ancient times. There is evidence of Assyrian tablets which prescribed rules for coping with dishonest practices in the sale of food. The correct weights and measures were prescribed. There are Egyptian scrolls which prescribe rules for labelling. These are very old things. However, if one looks at the history of this matter, one sees that at the heart of all these measures was the need to control corrupt practices and reckless profiteering. That is the answer to what Ms Gouws, who has now left us, argued and criticised us about. The real problem, the problem of food health, is closely connected to reckless profiteering or not, and to honesty.
One will only get a system that really guarantees safe food in a country where people are honest. In Switzerland, a Swiss person who gets to a red robot at three o'clock in the morning will not walk over the street, even though there is no car in sight for seven miles. This is because he is complying with the law. So what one is really doing in a law like this is coping with dishonest practices, because that is the African point members have made.
Although I can tell hon members about Assyrian history, about the laws that were made in the Middle Ages in Europe to make beer pure and to make food pure, or to make cheese healthy, people were slaughtering in Africa all this time and living quite happily. [Interjections.] But why was that. It was because in African traditional communities there was a social bonding and social ruling about how one did this type of thing. People could trust one another. The same went for the old farming communities. One knew that one could eat a certain farmer's meat, but that one should not eat meat at another person's farm, because he always got his meat somewhere in the bush, or whatever. [Interjections.]
That is the point that has been made here. Hon members know what I mean.
Daardie agb lid weet tog waarvan ek praat. [Gelag.]