Hon members, order! You may proceed, sir.
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: We say that the current labour laws should be amended as they discourage employers to create new jobs. The labour laws protect unionised workers at the expense of the jobless.
What is our alternative? Why not use, for example, an industrial development zone or a harbour as a pilot project. In that area, government allows more flexible labour laws and less government interference in the private sector. I predict that employment opportunities will increase dramatically in that area. High economic growth will take place and black empowerment will take place naturally, due to the number of relationships in South Africa. This is a challenge, and an opportunity for the ANC to prove us wrong.
The FF Plus supports the National Development Plan. It must bring new solutions. The weakest chapter in the plan is Chapter 15, which deals with nation-building. Do we have the right recipe in South Africa? I say, no. The answer is not in that chapter either. The ANC's current recipe does not work. We tried to stumble from one international sporting event to the next.
In the majority of African states there is not only one language and one culture to use for nation-building. Which recipe did these African countries use? They used the citizens' joint anger and opposition to the European oppressors as a nation-building recipe. Because the colonial bosses had returned to Europe, it worked well to unite people in this way against a common absent enemy.
But this recipe cannot work in South Africa. President Mandela realised this. That is why he reached out to Afrikaners and to other whites who had no other countries to return to. To declare them an enemy is the Malema recipe. We saw last year the consequences of this recipe. It is a recipe that divides and incites people against one another and leads to conflict.
Often when the ANC is in trouble some leaders use the Malema recipe. Yesterday, we had to listen to some of those speeches. The whites, the Afrikaners or the farmers are then the cause of all the problems, and are identified as the enemy. This is short-sighted and cannot work.
The title of the film Invictus comes from a poem that President Mandela used in jail for inspiration. According to the poem, you can do something to me, but you cannot change my thoughts with laws or with violence. It appears as if the current ANC has not learned a lesson from this.
Following the Bambatha Rebellion, Dinizulu kaCetshwayo, King of the Zulu nation, was put in jail by the British authorities in 1908. Two years later, General Louis Botha, as an old friend of the Zulu king, became Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. One of the first things Botha did was to order the release of Dinuzulu. Louis Botha also saw to it that the king received a farm, Uitkyk Farm, in the Middleburg area. Today the statues of Louis Botha and Dinuzulu stand next to each other in Durban.
Louis Botha is also one of my heroes, following the Anglo-Boer War, with his attempts to stop British Imperialism in South Africa. But every time I drive past the street name changes in Pretoria, I see the ANC has drawn a red line through Louis Botha's name. Surely, then I am cross again. I view this as disregarding my heroes and South African history. There is no way in which one could force nation-building on people in this manner. If it is not a willing process by all participants, it will not succeed.
The right nation-building recipe is to view the different identities in South Africa as assets and to recognise them as such. In this way, a situation is created where we all feel like winners and there are no losers. I ask for room to be myself in Africa. It is as simple as that. I demand that there is also a place for me, my language, my children, recognition of my heroes and respect for all the others around me.
What do we choose in South Africa? Do we choose the Malema recipe of divide and make enemies, or the Mandela recipe of reach out and accommodate? I choose the accommodate recipe, where all identities, with mutual respect, are appreciated and accommodated by laws, minority rights and by international self-determination.
I said that Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The current policy directions are not working. South Africa is in trouble. Fresh and new plans have to be made to resolve these problems and again give hope for and certainty about the future. We all need it at the moment, because we have nowhere else to go.
Thank you very much, sir.