Chair, the ANC supports the Budget Vote, and we support the budget, taking into consideration the fact that it is very important to continue to transform the justice system of South Africa.
Access to justice is important in the creation of peace - peace that is undermined half the time in all that we see happening in the country. So, through this budget, we will be in a position to continue to create more courts; we will be in a position to continue to support all the institutions that actually promote justice in South Africa.
We will continue to support the NPA, the SIU, Chapter 9 institutions, the Public Protector and the SA Human Rights Commission to ensure that justice prevails in South Africa.
We also acknowledge the fact that the department has been in a position to come out of a situation in which it used to get qualified audit statements. Now we are getting unqualified audit statements, while some of the units that fall under the department received clean audits. This has actually been a situation the department has grappled with. This is a situation in the department that was carried over from the apartheid mess that had been created within the department. By the way, this is not the only department that is actually grappling with the legacy of apartheid, which we sometimes, as we put arguments forward, try to forget about.
One example is the whole job situation. When you talk about it, it is as if it is only today that we are seeing people who do not have work, forgetting about the fact that today the statistics are such that they take into consideration every citizen of South Africa. During the apartheid system, in which there was influx control, the statistics didn't really bother about access to justice. The people who were counted were the ones who had made their way to the urban areas of South Africa.
The department's ... Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]
Vote agreed to (Economic Freedom Fighters dissenting).
Vote No 25 - Police - put.
Declarations of vote: