Deputy Chairperson and hon members, in January 1929, 96 years ago, here in Cape Town, a South African political party adopted a remarkable and, at the time, an unprecedented programmatic perspective. It called for one person, one vote; for democratic majority rule; for what it called a black republic, to reflect the demographic realities of South Africa - but with equal rights for all South Africans, white and black.
The party in question was the Communist Party of South Africa, as it was then known. [Interjections.] The 1929 resolution of this party also called on its members to work closely with what it described as the nascent, or emergent, national liberation organisations - and the ANC was specifically mentioned.
At first, I don't think the Communist Party of South Africa fully grasped the wisdom and potential of its own strategic perspective. It was only in the latter part of the 1930s, and with the leadership of outstanding revolutionaries, like Moses Kotane and J B Marks, who were both communists and ANC leaders, that this appreciation was developed, in theory and in practice.
At the heart of this perspective was the realisation that, in our South African reality, the struggle for an egalitarian society, for equal rights for all who live in our country, was of necessity and intimately connected with the struggle for the national liberation of an oppressed, black majority.
As a well-known 19th century political philosopher - he had a big beard and spoke English with a German accent - writing about the English colonial oppression of Ireland, said: "A people that oppresses another can never itself be free."
In short, there is a deep connection between the democratic struggle for equal rights for all and the national liberation struggles of oppressed peoples against colonialism, neocolonialism and all other forms of national and racial oppression.
The white minority in South Africa - into which, yes, I was born - we, the collective beneficiaries of centuries of aggressive colonial dispossession and of decades of white minority rule, this white minority into which I was born, itself required the advance of a national liberation struggle of the black majority.
It was the overwhelming electoral victory of the ANC in 1994 that created the conditions for all of us - all of us as South Africans, black and white - to finally live within a shared, nonracial democracy with one of the most progressive Constitutions in the world. [Applause.]
It's a Constitution that affirms equal rights for all. These rights are both individual but also, importantly, collective rights; of taal en kultuur [language and culture] - yes, hon Dreyer, of language and culture; of belief - yes, hon Dudley, both those who are believers in God and those who are nonbelievers. We all have the right to aspire to our beliefs.
There are workers' collective rights to organise; and the rights of communities dispossessed of property to restitution and equitable redress.
However, the 1994 democratic breakthrough and the 1996 Constitution were not the end of the process. They were, and remain, important bridgeheads and entry points for an ongoing struggle to provide real, substantive content to our nonracial democracy; to ensure the progressive realisation of the rights that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. In short, an ongoing national, democratic struggle, a radical, national, democratic struggle is required in order not just to advance but to defend the very advances that we made in the mid-1990s in terms of our democracy, our Constitution and the nonracial society in which we live.
This is a reality, however, about which the DA, in particular, is in deep denial. This is why the DA gets into such a tangle over employment equity - a tangle that was to lead to the demise of Lindiwe Mazibuko, their former leader in Parliament. [Interjections.] This is why, last week in this very House, a DA member could tell us, without blushing, that the problems of this country didn't begin in 1652 but in 1994. I mean, what blatant racist amnesia! [Interjections.] What else can you say it is?
Now, the DA leader, Premier Zille, is much more sophisticated and wouldn't say something as stupid as that. However, it's precisely the same outlook that was at play when, last year, after the elections, she told a journalist in the United Kingdom - not here in South Africa - that the DA wasn't ever expecting to win a national electoral majority. Rather, she said, the DA game plan is to divide the ANC. This is how she put it:
The battle is on in the ANC. It's a huge contestation. The battle within the ANC is who controls the brand.
As if the ANC was a brand! As if we were some commodity on the market! [Interjections.] No, Premier Zille, the ANC is the story of millions and millions of South Africans in a century-long struggle ... [Applause.] ... in the face of a crime against humanity and the ongoing legacy of that crime in our society, as we speak today. [Interjections.]
Let us return, however, to what Premier Zille said in her interview - and this is not making it up; this is quoting directly from the interview:
Who gets to hold on to the biggest political brand in South Africa?
She was talking about the ANC, thinking we're marketing. She wasn't talking about the DA. She said:
Is it the people who support the Constitution or the people who support the national democratic revolution?
She talks about a division between these two things - that's their problem. Eventually, she says:
The realignment of politics will happen around the principles espoused in the Constitution and our job ...
... meaning the DA's job ...
... is to be a catalyst to bring all the people together who support the Constitution, the rule of law, and support for an open-market economy.
[Interjections.] Now, you can go with a large magnifying glass, the largest you can find, and go through the Constitution. You will not find a single reference to an open-market economy in our Constitution. [Interjections.] [Applause.]
To return to the main point, Premier Zille imagines that there is a division within the ANC and its alliance; between those supporting the Constitution and the rule of law and those supporting an ongoing national democratic revolution. There is absolutely no such gap whatsoever. [Interjections.]
We are united in the conviction that the ongoing national democratic struggle and the Constitution are not in contradiction with each other. On the contrary, unless we press ahead with determination, South Africa's democratic and constitutional advances will be eroded and dissipated. [Interjections.]
We were told by the hon Mahlangu, who was the opening DA speaker, about an open-opportunity society. Now, let me read what the DA says about an open- opportunity society:
In an open-opportunity society, your path in life is not determined by the circumstances of your birth, including your material circumstances ...
they don't like to use the word "wealth", so they say "material" ...
and regardless of your demographic ...
they don't like to use the word "race" - regardless of those circumstances ...
but rather by your individual talents and your individual efforts. That is why, in an open-opportunity society, a child born in poverty ...
Clearly, in their open-opportunity society, children will still be born in poverty because they're not trying to address that!
... should, nevertheless, be able to become a brain surgeon, provided he ...
I think they also meant he and she.
... has the talent and puts in the individual effort required to succeed.
This is a B-grade version of Oprah Winfrey's world view. You don't need radical transformation of poverty and inequality. What you need is to create opportunities for some talented individuals to rise. It's a horrible, myopic, self-satisfied and ultimately cruel illusion for the majority of South Africans. {Applause.] The Freedom Charter, in both its opening statement and its closing clause, firmly locates its vision within the context of winning national sovereignty. When we talk about the national question and the national democratic revolution, we often forget about national sovereignty, and yet it's so important. In 1994, we seemed all to agree that we finally won a one-person-one-vote, nonracial, majority-rule democracy. This historic victory, however, was gained in a global situation in which there are powerful forces that actively seek to erode the significance of national democratic mandates. Let them have their majority rule, but we will erode it. This is the case, even in the advanced economies of the West.
In 2007, for instance, Alan Greenspan, who was then the US Federal Reserve - the Reserve Bank - governor, was asked which candidate he supported in the US presidential elections. His response was extremely revealing. This is what he said - and again, this is a direct quotation:
We are fortunate that, thanks to globalisation, policy decisions in the United States have been largely replaced by the global market. It hardly makes any difference at all who will be the next president. The world is governed by market forces. Now, I'm not sure if Greenspan thought this was a problem for democracy. I don't think he even cared. However, this casual disregard for democracy and for national electoral mandates was dramatically evidenced, once more, in 2013, with the top-down replacement of two elected governments - one, a right-wing government - in Italy and in Greece, with European Union- sanctioned technocrats representing the interests of German and French bankers.
It's also playing itself out, right now, with the electoral mandate of Greece's new Syriza party actively being blocked by the same banking interests. [Interjections.] So, let's not collectively, as South Africans, be naive about the world in which we are living.
As our Parliament wobbled on the brink of becoming dysfunctional on the night of the state of the nation address last month, there were other forces outside of this Chamber gleefully watching what was happening in here. These are the forces who would be quite happy to see Parliament gridlocked; to see us become defocused, entwined in a web of filibustering points of order and smart-alec, schoolboy- debating-society arrogance; a Parliament incapable of passing legislation or of attending to its strategic, national responsibilities. Those who are driving Parliament in this direction from inside need to know what game they are playing and whose agenda they are playing into - perhaps unwittingly. [Applause.]
On the very day after the state of the nation wobble, the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa expressed alarm at what it called a plethora of new pieces of legislation before our Parliament. It said several pending Bills, including the Expropriation Bill, were said to be "of concern" to the American Chamber.
An editorial by their local, thoroughly unpatriotic megaphone, Business Day, faithfully took up the cudgels on behalf of those interests. [Interjections.] The Bill, it complained, allows for expropriation in the public interest. Precisely! That's because the Bill of Rights explicitly introduces expropriation in the public interest. Hon Dreyer, of course I am pushing forward for an expropriation Act from Parliament. Why? Because the Constitution requires it. The Bill of Rights requires an expropriation Act, a general law of application. [Applause.]
So, you can't claim the Constitution on the one hand and then, on the other, complain when we try to implement precisely the requirements of the Bill of Rights and the property clause. [Interjections.] [Applause.]
What the American Chamber and others who don't like an expropriation Act want in South Africa is for expropriation Acts not to be the subject of South African law; not for disputes to be heard in South African courts in terms of our Constitution, but rather to be subject to technocratic, foreign arbitration that will favour the interests of the global 0,1%, not the people of South Africa, black and white.
They don't want reindustrialisation, like this bunch. They don't want beneficiation of our mineral resources. They don't want national food security. [Interjections.] They don't want a Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Brics, alliance.