Mr Speaker, Comrade President, Comrade Deputy President, comrades and hon members, I stand on behalf of the APC to support this Budget Vote. [Applause.]
The APC salutes the role and efforts of your government, Comrade President, in the affairs of our continent. Whilst our past might have been grossly impacted upon by others, the future must surely be in our own hands. Our continent is faced with the imperatives of development, unity, peace and security. When these strategic imperatives are jeopardised, it is not up to France or any other outside force to intervene. Africans must have the capacity to act. South Africa as a key player in Africa cannot be on the periphery of finding solutions to African challenges.
Our continent cannot develop when there is instability, insecurity and unconstitutional removal of governments. Whereas Africa is endowed with natural and human resources, we do not occupy the front rows amongst nations of the world in terms of development. This undesirable condition can only be changed by concerted and united action by the whole of Africa.
The APC believes that South Africa, together with other African powerhouses like Nigeria, Kenya, Algeria, etc, must be the pivot around which Africa is propelled forward. Our disunity is the basis of our weakness and an enabler of neocolonialism. Only in unity can we can rid Africa of the curse of the Berlin Conference of 1885. The quest for Pan-African unity took an organisational form 15 years after the Berlin Conference, with the convening of the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900. This was to be followed by a series of such conferences, including the watershed Manchester Pan-African Congress of 1945, and the All-African People's Conference held in the newly independent Ghana in 1958. It was followed by the Addis Ababa Summit in 1963, which founded the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, as an institutional expression of the quest for African unity.
Comrades, it is only in unity, in integration - political, economic and military - that Africa can harness its resources to improve the material conditions of our people and defend our sovereignty, having experienced as a people the ravages of slavery, colonialism and now neocolonialism in different degrees. In this important task, South Africa must continue to play a leading role with others. The APC agrees that, indeed, South Africa is a different country from the one inherited in 1994. [Applause.] A lot has been done, yet so much still needs to be done for freedom to have material meaning to the majority of our people. I thank you. [Applause.]