Chairperson, the democratic government has inherited a huge socioeconomic backlog from centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid misrule. As a result, the country is faced with triple challenges of high levels of poverty - in some instances most of our people are trapped in abject poverty - unprecedented levels of unemployment that mostly engulf young people, and an ever growing gap of inequality that was confirmed through the Gini coefficient process.
Is it therefore true, hon Minister, that Moody's has reviewed our rating as a country, citing these challenges as posing a risk of political instability? Are we not perhaps prisoners of semantics and terminology in this nationalisation debate? Should we not rather be seeking sustainable interventions that are geared towards ensuring equitable access to goods and services by all in our country?