Hon Speaker, His Excellency President Zuma, hon Deputy President, Cabinet colleagues, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, as I listened to your address yesterday, Mr Speaker, here at this podium, I was reminded of how far we've come since President Nelson Mandela delivered his first state of the nation address.
It's important that we take the time to reflect on the journey that we've travelled, but at the same time to ask whether we've made sufficient progress. We must reflect on where we find ourselves now as a country, but also locate that reflection within the shifts that have taken place globally over this period. Tony Judt offers this short but powerful reflection in his book, Ill Fares the Land:
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.
Social transformation is not a gift from the gods and neither is it always a product of cataclysmic events. It is a product of a deep realisation that the conditions under which we live and under which we are required to raise families are unacceptable and unjust. It's a product of a deep probing of the kind that Judt encourages us to practise.
It is also a probing that requires of us as members of this House and as leadership generally to remind ourselves of where we come from and what has guided us through our life. To the two speakers who spoke before me, I would use the words of the great Amilcar Cabral and say: Claim no easy victories, mask no difficulties and tell no lies. [Applause.]
Indeed, if the hon Mazibuko weren't that keen on Freedom House and she wanted to understand what is happening in education, I would take you today, Madam, to Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and Gugulethu, and show you what is happening under the administration of your sky blue. [Applause.] I will show you what is happening to the lives of the children of the poor, and then you would know ... [Interjections.]