Madam Speaker, according to the story of creation, God took soil from the land to create human beings. Even scientists say that when we die we all turn into dust, meaning we return to the land that we are made of.
By this logic, it means that without land we cannot exist. We are from the land and we shall return to the land. The land is the alpha and omega of human existence.
The crimes of colonisation and apartheid were crimes against humanity because they dispossessed people of their land - the very thing that makes them human. This means that until we have restored land to the people we have not humanised them; we have not even begun to allow them to exist.
This discussion of human rights remains empty and superficial if its demands and assessments are not based on restoring land to our people. It means that "Sharpeville Day" should actually be called "Land Day" because the pass laws were about restricting people's movement on the land and also marking them as those who cannot own land, declaring them cheap and easily disposable labour in the migrant labour system.
It is about 55 years since 69 residents of Sharpeville were killed while marching against pass laws. It is also 21 years after the promise of democracy in 1994, yet our people remain landless, jobless, homeless and hungry on their land.
The ANC-led government has dismally failed to humanise our people. It has reduced the struggle for humanising black people to superficial achievements like the Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP. They declared this year the year of the Freedom Charter, but there is nothing to show for it, only mediocrity and easy victories. [Interjections.]
Yesterday we visited Gugulethu and witnessed that the Group Areas Act lives on. Our people continue to live in cramped conditions. They live with rats and rubbish, and no one helps them to improve their conditions. [Interjections.] This means economic freedom is the most important human right. Freedom of speech, freedom of the media, freedom of thought, freedom to vote and be voted for will come alive when economic freedom is achieved.
Economic freedom is the only blanket that can cover the indignity that our people have suffered for centuries and continue to suffer till this day. Economic freedom is what will end the xenophobic, racist and sexist violence that we experience in our communities.
Sharpeville must also remind us of the massacre of the democratic government, the Marikana massacre. [Interjections.] This is history in its own right. The ANC-led government presided over the largest massacre over a labour dispute since the Rand Revolt of 1922.
Marikana workers have found no closure to this day. They still do not earn the R12 500 for which they died or were injured. They still work under exploitative conditions. But a government of cowards can never deliver human rights; a government of dishonest people can never deliver human rights.
A Parliament that thinks people are not equal before the law can never deliver human rights. A Parliament of people who think that the President is not equal to all other South Africans before the law will never deliver human rights. [Interjections.]
A Parliament of people who protect corruption, even when it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, will never give our people dignity. A Parliament that cannot tell the President to pay back the money unduly spent on Nkandla cannot give us human rights. [Interjections.] Only a Parliament and government of economic freedom can give dignity and reconcile human rights with the primary existence. Thank you, Madam Speaker. [Time expired.] [Applause.]