Hon Speaker, Your Excellency President Jacob Zuma, the Deputy President, hon Ministers, hon Members of Parliament, distinguished guests in the Gallery, ladies and gentlemen, I greet you all.
We can only create a better life for all South Africans if our young people get the skills and the training that we need to make our economy grow and make our democracy work. That is why the ANC government makes education compulsory for all children.
We must therefore ensure that all our children have access to decent and formal education. If our education system is to produce the capable, skilled and empowered people who can turn South Africa into the just and prosperous nation of our dreams, we must overcome the years of neglect that have left most of our children without proper facilities for their education.
Hon Speaker, allow me to quote Mr Hendrik Verwoerd, when he said:
There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.
Hon Speaker, the year 2013 marks the 60th anniversary of the Bantu Education Act, which introduced and systematised a racist system of education aimed at severely restricting the educational opportunities of blacks in this country. Most of our government's efforts with regard to education since 1994 have been aimed at overcoming this burdensome legacy together with the entire oppressive inheritance of colonialism and apartheid. Since 1994 the ANC government has made impressive progress in trying to undo the deep damage that has been made in the lives of black people, especially in South Africa. Drastic measures have been taken in making sure that everybody gets equal and quality education in our country.
If Verwoerd and his criminal apartheid regime of 1948 had said the black child must not study mathematics and no black worker must become a skilled artisan, President Jacob Zuma has categorically said the black child must indeed study and be competent in mathematics and that we must increase the production of new artisans, including black artisans in our country. [Applause.]
President Zuma has not only said these things, but has led from the front through leading concrete interventions in education as part of inverting and destroying the Verwoerd legacy. [Applause.] In 2009, President Zuma decided to split the former department of education into two. This was indeed a stroke of genius that is beginning to bear fruit. [Applause.]
Unfortunately, Mr President, in this august House and outside there we have some people, like president Lekota, who feels that that was just a waste of resources, and that proves that those are people who are without the vision to take our country forward. I would like to remind this House about what uTata uMadiba said about education, when he said:
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that a daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of a farmworker can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
[Applause.] [Interjections.]