Hon House Chairperson, hon Deputy Minister of Education, hon Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, hon Minister of Health in absentia, hon members, distinguished special delegates, friends, colleagues and comrades, I must confirm that I used to work under the leadership of hon Galela. When I met him during the late eighties, I was already in the SA Students Congress. Both of us were in the National Education Co-ordinating Committee, together with Joyce Mashamba - the current Director-General for Education. He is correct but he only missed one point: I was not in Cosas; I was in Sasco. [Laughter.]
There could be no better time for this august House to debate this critical report in the history of our Parliament than today. The report on taking Parliament to the people in the Northern Cape is presented to this august House at the most trying and critical time in the history of our evolving Parliament as the highest institution of our democracy.
It comes at a time when pessimists and critics of our democracy and freedom, both on the left and right of our political spectrum, have joined efforts to question the efficacy, capacity and effectiveness of our Parliament as the voice of the voiceless and final arbiter of the diverse aspirations of our people.
These critics, some of whom are amongst us in this august House, have, amongst others, charged that our Parliament is a toothless lapdog that tags along in the shadow of the executive. They have made these assertions without making an effort to understand the functioning of Parliament.
The debate on this report must accordingly constitute one critical test to determine the fallacy or correctness of these assertions. The Freedom Charter, which contains the vision that defines the type of society we seek to build and the very embodiment of the fundamental aspirations of our people, declared 51 years ago that, and I quote:
We the people of South Africa declare for all our country and the world to know that South Africa belongs to all those who live in it, black and white; that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people; that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities; that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthrights, without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief; And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together as equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom Charter; And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.
That quotation of the Freedom Charter is a living reality of the challenges that define South Africa's political landscape today, and there is no doubt about that. To the extent that the people of South Africa bestowed a democratic mandate on the ANC on that historic day of 27 April 1994, and that we are moving in terms of addressing these challenges outlined in the Freedom Charter, there is no other yardstick on the basis of which our performance as Parliament and as government can be measured, except on the basis of what I have mentioned.
We are saying that, much as the executive, through its own initiative, has an imbizo programme where it liases and constantly interacts and interfaces with the masses of our people, we also have road show programmes. I think the hon Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry has alluded to the trade and industry programme, through which it interfaces with the masses of our people.
That is quite critical and central to the vision of the Freedom Charter, because it is the Freedom Charter which states that there can be no development and prosperity in South Africa unless the masses of our people, whom we seek to liberate, are at the centre of those processes of reconstruction and development.
Most of the speakers have touched on a number of issues that one would have wanted to touch on. But I want to highlight a few issues, particularly regarding those who believe that our democratic institution, the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, is not as effective as it is supposed to be. One is not very sure what the basis is for those assertions, determinations and conclusions that have been arrived at.
It is not a secret that these voices have actually emerged from Parliament itself, that is from some of the opposition parties and of course, broadly speaking, within the broader democratic movement in our own country. We have not been advised as to what has been the yardstick that measures the success or failures of government. If it is what the ANC government defined as its principal task in 1994 and reaffirmed in 1999 and 2004, I don't think there is a debate on that, because we will be moving from different premises in terms of assessing whether Parliament is doing what it is supposed to or not.
The programme of ``Taking Parliament to the People'' is unparallelled, not only in the history of the South African political dispensation but also globally. I was in the Czech Republic and Germany, and I have interacted with a number of delegations, including the delegation from the former Soviet Union - hon Tolo, where you trained for propaganda and military combat. [Laughter.]
They could not believe the extent to which South Africans, through the National Council of Provinces, have found a profound expression of democratic practice as in the NCOP's ``Taking Parliament to the People'' programme. They have been there. We have drawn some of the best practices of our democratic system from the Soviet Union. There is no secret about that, but they have never practised what we are doing.
I am trying to say that that is one of the yardsticks on the basis of which we need to measure whether we are moving forward as a country or not, because not only in South Africa but globally the tendency is to have a representative democracy whereby the elected elite is the one that determines whether our people's priorities are electricity, roads and water or something else.
Ours is a people's government, by the people and for the people. It is a government of the people which engages our people, and they articulate their priorities in terms of day-to-day challenges that they are facing. On the basis of those, our executive and our departments are then able to ensure that in their planning and resource allocation, they are able to prioritise those particular sets of challenges that confront our people.
That is where Parliament comes in, hon Thetjeng. Parliament does not implement the programmes of government. Parliament comes in to oversee the actions of the executive to ensure that the executive does everything that it pronounced and undertook to do; and, as the voice and representative of the people, Parliament then ensures that those things that everybody within the executive and government have undertaken to do are actually done with speed and urgency.
I normally thought that a mistaken view which conflates Parliament and the executive into one thing is held only by our disadvantaged people, because they never knew a democratic Parliament before 27 April 1994. But, most unfortunately, even those tested and experienced within the white minority Parliament don't understand the separation of powers, because Parliament was not open and not democratic. They don't understand the role of Parliament vis--vis the role of the executive.
I therefore want to say that, much as we are about engaging and interacting with the masses of our people, we are also about empowering and educating them to understand the fundamental spirit and the doctrines of our Constitution. What is the role of the executive, Parliament and the judiciary?
I want to thank the hon Darryl Worth from the DA who is bold and courageous. We need men and women like you and the late hon Raju, who was once courageous in this august House, to come and publicly emulate the good practices of the ANC within this august House. We want to thank you. Don't be shy of making such assertions. [Interjections.] [Applause.]
Hon Chairperson, I knew that hon Terblanche would heckle me because she belongs to the far right of the DA and she doesn't want to change. [Laughter.] So I am not surprised. [Interjections.]