Previous ANC speakers underlined many of the highlights of what this fourth ANC-led, democratic administration has achieved under your leadership, Comrade President. Building on earlier advances by previous ANC- led administrations, the fourth administration has driven major improvements in life expectancy and a major reduction in mother-to-child HIV transmission.
It has also introduced, for the first time, a 20-year approach to planning and tabled the National Development Plan, a vision that we are all proud of. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, Numsa, Cosatu, the SACP, everybody, is proud of this vision that has been presented. The administration has driven the massification of our public employment scheme through the Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, and the Community Work Programme.
There are many other important qualitative shifts driven by the post-2009 administration, and I want to dwell on one important shift, the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, PICC, the underlying statistics of which speak for themselves. It was the third administration that really kick-started a massive government-led infrastructure programme that led to a successful Fifa Soccer World Cup, and this administration intends doubling government expenditure on infrastructure. No wonder even the Financial Mail - although it does not acknowledge that it is government's intervention - acknowledged that construction is the runaway leader in terms of the relative development of gross domestic product growth by sector.
The labour market statistics for the New Growth Path period of the third quarter of 2010 also present a similar story: success, success, and success. If you come to this podium in an election year, you will not see that success. If you come to this podium after having read the garbage that is being spread in the media and everywhere else, you will not see the success that this fourth administration has actually achieved. [Interjections.] The PICC's impact is not just directed at unlocking untapped mineral resources through the co-ordinated development of rail lines, water pipelines, energy provision and human settlements, it is also beginning to unlock plans that have long been sitting idle, even under the apartheid administration, such as the Mzimvubu Dam, on which, as a result of the intervention of this Presidency, progress is being made. [Applause.]
Residents of Kosovo Informal Settlement in Philippi have been told by Mayor De Lille that she has now suspended the sending of council sanitation staff to empty toilets. The residents say the toilets, which are supposed to be emptied twice a week, haven't been emptied in three months. [Interjections.] It is important to remember that the sanitation crisis in Cape Town is not new. First there was the open-toilet saga. There was also the disastrous City-led maintenance of communal toilets by using a completely botched EPWP project. Let's be fair, it is not only in Cape Town that there is a problem with sanitation, but the problem is the response of the DA to this crisis in relation to the Western Cape.
What does the DA say? According to the policy, which is on their website under "Our Policies" and "Housing Policy", the DA says to communities suffering this terrible indignity that "providing adequate shelter is first and foremost an individual responsibility". It is a principle that they repeat three times on that website. [Interjections.] Essentially, what they are saying is: Black man, you are on your own. [Applause.] Impoverished black women, the homeless, those who are crowded into unhygienic informal settlements, you are basically on your own. The DA is without you. The DA assures you that most people are quite able and willing to play their role, particularly if bureaucratic obstacles are removed. So, for them, it is a problem of bureaucracy. That is why they cannot empty toilets in those informal settlements. [Interjections.]
I think that, of course, we are very clear that we do not condone what happened over the last few weeks, where people were throwing faeces. However, if you label people as "aliens", they will be alienated. If you label people as "aliens", as "refugees," they will be aliens. They will behave in the same way. Since we have been saying "amen" a lot and talking about the Bible, it is the same Bible that says "whoever sows injustice will reap calamity" and that "whatever one sows, that will he also reap". We have seen what the premier and the mayor have been reaping over the last few weeks. [Applause.] In Philippi and in Du Noon and Khayelitsha, all of the communities are coming to their own conclusion about your attitudes and your policies - that they stink. They don't want that.
The same leave-it-to-the-market approach is to be found in the DA's perspective of the reindustrialisation of our economy. The DA has rejected our government-led Industrial Policy Action Plan, Ipap, arguing instead for a light touch from the state. The DA tells us that government's role is to pick winners and leave the rest to the market. Last week, Hisense launched a television and refrigeration plant in Atlantis, which they were encouraged to do through a R28,6 million investment by the Department of Trade and Industry as a result of Ipap. What did Helen Zille do? She ran for a photo opportunity. [Interjections.] She forgot about her criticism of Ipap; she forgot about her criticism of the New Growth Path; she forgot that she was advocating divisions on the new development plan. She was pushing everybody, trying to be in the main frame of the picture on that particular day. [Applause.] She didn't say to the Chinese and the Vice President of China, who were there, that their state-led industrialisation was a threat to our democracy. She didn't say to them that we did not want their investment because it was as a result of state intervention. She didn't lecture them about their liberal ideology, that of leaving everything to the market. Instead, all she was interested in was whether the voters in Atlantis would see her in that picture. That is what the DA is all about - their opportunism when it comes to policy articulation vis-- vis their opportunism when it comes to getting rank and file votes from our people. [Applause.]
There is one other form of opportunism that I think, hon President, we really need to expose. [Interjections.] The DA and their friends have a great deal to say about corruption in government, and we must deal with corruption in government. It is our collective responsibility to do that. What are we to make of the virtually total silence of the DA in relation to the multi-billion rand fraudulent collusion on the part of at least 18 construction companies, including six major South African companies, as exposed by the Competition Commission? Peter Bruce even encourages them to continue doing that by saying the following:
Surely the idea in some industries and in some circumstances would be to see the value in price collusion ... The only way to get things done, and done shipshape, was to allow the big firms basically to divide up the work among themselves. Now Patel wants to police collusion in the state's big infrastructure programme.
Essentially, Peter Bruce is brazenly, in a business newspaper, advocating criminal behaviour. This is not just petty theft. This is not R100. We are talking about 300 projects that involved more than R47 billion. Let's leave it to the market. Yet, our friends here who shout the loudest when there is a publication about allegations of corruption in the newspapers were quiet when it came to this. Because they support competition, which is liberation - support competition, the market, and all of that - we thought they would be the first ones to make a statement. Yet, they sat back and relaxed. Maybe they said that these companies were too big to fail. Maybe they are even too big to jail. We must focus on the minnows, on the small ones, on the government bureaucrats and so forth. Those are the ones who must be jailed. It is wrong for the DA to keep quiet about this. [Applause.]
There has been a creeping and personalised attack, President, from the opposition, not on the Presidency, but on you as individual, on your person. Obviously, because we are going into elections, this excitement, this adrenaline, is going to be coming up. [Interjections.] It is not new. In fact, in 2009, British columnist Peter Hitchens wrote in the Mail on Sunday and told his readers that "a hopelessly one-sided and rather crooked election" will be taking place in South Africa and that ours will be a failed state. What was the basis of this attack on the ANC and also on its president? They said the following about the President:
He completely lacks the Westernised polish and smoothness of Mandela and Mbeki ... South Africa's largest tribe are a proud fighting people, and Zuma will not be a mild leader, as Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, his two forerunners, were ... Young men, brought up in the warrior spirit, wander in angry and resentful groups, strikingly unlike the more peaceful Xhosas to the south.
No one - and my apologies for quoting this nonsense, and this bilious, unreconstructed colonial trash - but no one can and will openly say some of these things. I don't imagine that, at least not in public, but some in the DA do repeat these things. They do repeat them. You know, I have an article here - this is the DA. This is what "KnowyourDA" is all about. The DA is reproducing almost similar garbage to that reproduced in Western countries, about how racist some of the individuals in the DA are and about the anger among some of the black politicians in the DA who cannot take it any more, who are sick and tired of how racist some of the councillors are. Some of them even go to the extent of confessing to the fact that the DA will be too dangerous to take over the Port Elizabeth metropolitan area. People internal in the DA are praying that the DA in that area does not take over the metro. [Applause.]
You don't have to spend millions of rands on "KnowyourDA", developing propaganda and 12-minute videos. [Interjections.] You have to spend millions of rands making sure that some from your benches and some in your councils down there become true South Africans and forget some of this nonsense that is being repeated in this article and this email - and I want to read some of it because you may think that I am creating this. One of the things that chap reproduces or repeats is that there is a 25% pregnancy rate amongst schoolgirls because we have out-fornicated everyone and spread disease. [Interjections.] He goes on to say the following. The e-mail refers to black people as "dumb idiots who wait for handouts". The e-mail further refers to the President as "having more wives than brain cells". Now, this is a party that looks upon not only the President but also young girls in schools and black people in general, even those who are in the DA, as idiots, as beasts whose main preoccupation is sex. Yet, the DA says that you need to "KnowyourDA."
That is not the only evidence. If you look at what is happening in the Western Cape; if you look at the composition of government in the Western Cape; if you look at the bureaucracy in the Western Cape, it is lily white. It is a reflection of what was happening under apartheid, and we don't want to see that being repeated in the eight other provinces. [Applause.] We now know the DA. We know that it stands for this racism that is being distributed by Cllr Slabbert in the Eastern Cape. Stop saying that "a job is a job", particularly those people who are on this side of the bench and who are aware of these problems. Stop being the acceptable "darkie" in the DA. You know where you belong. It is not enough to just say that "a job is a job". Let's get on with it. [Interjections.]