Mr Chairman, I love this country, I am proud of our democracy and I recognise that things are easier said than done. But my heart goes out to the Ministers concerned, because we want them to succeed. We understand very well - my colleague has mentioned it - the linkages between crime and business confidence, crime and investment, and crime and tourism.
I want to talk to members briefly today, not only about crime - the understanding of which is vital - but the causes of crime, if we are going to deal with the matter effectively. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that he was talking to the Minister of Education and to the Minister of Health about rape, and that he was liaising with his colleagues.
But I want to alert the Ministers to a potentially devastating link between crime and Aids. Currently, there are 200 000 Aids orphans in our country; and, by the year 2005, 1,5 million children will have lost their mothers to Aids. Now I want to tell the Ministers that Aids, in my view, has been a vital and important contributory cause to the dysfunctional state of collapse, lawlessness and civil violence in the countries of central Africa. There has been a loss of markets, an assault on the stabilising structure of family life, a loss of skills to the economy, but, most importantly, the psychological impact on society in general and the effect upon lawlessness and crime, and upon an individual's sense of self-worth. A kind of desperate short-termism comes into the equation.
If one is unemployed, orphaned, or dying, one can become reckless and desperate. I wish to request Ministers, seriously, to institute a commission or urgent study to research these links, or to get a university to research these links, between Aids, crime, and social disintegration, and to see what can be done about it.
A study by Barings Bank shows us that by the year 2006, 26% of our economically active population will be HIV positive. Life expectancy will drop from 60 years to 40 years by the year 2008. Only 50% of people alive in South Africa today are going to reach the age of 60.
I believe that these realities have already had, and are likely to have, a major impact on our poor behaviour and crime, and increasingly so. An urgent study on this aspect of things needs to be done so that possible corrective action can be taken and behaviour understood. [Time expired.]