Hon Speaker, honourable President, Deputy President, hon members of the House, allow me to dedicate my contribution to this debate to one of the youngest souls in South Africa, a person who, alongside her peers, devoted the majority of her life to solidarity with the workers, peasants and the oppressed of our motherland, and continues to do so even today. Mrs Epainette Mamofokeng Mbeki, who celebrated her ninety-seventh birthday on Saturday, is arguably the great iconic figure of her generation! She is also one of the oldest members of the Congress of the People! [Interjections.] I ask fellow members of the House to join us in wishing her well in the years that lay ahead!
I also wish to place on record our sincere and very deep sadness at the loss of Comrade Phyllis Naidoo, who served the cause of freedom and justice at home and around the world. I plead with God that her soul may rest in peace!
Today I would like to invite members of the House and the people of our country to join me on a short journey. As early as 2010, the Minister of Finance drew attention to the expenditure on compensation in the government's wage bill, which he pointed out, in 2010, claimed 40% of taxpayers' revenue. In 2011 he warned that personnel spending and debt service costs had grown rapidly. In the 2012-13 estimates he pointed out that the wage bill budgeted for was 35%, which in itself was a staggering amount looked at against the backdrop of the national revenue of R967,5 billion.
Consequently, the Minister pointed out that the wage agreement of 2012, which added R37,5 billion over the medium term, would also absorb a large share of additional allocations. This means that the money that had already been budgeted for, services to our people, would now be absorbed by additional salaries to those who walk up and down the passages of government offices, leaving the people with nothing at all. The Minister then went further and promised that, and I quote:
Government will take a more deliberate approach to managing overall employment and wage trends across the public sector. Government will curtail unwarranted growth in personnel numbers.
When we came to the state of the nation address here, I expected to hear that government had a plan to act on this urgent and devastating setback. I expected to hear that government, given the advice of the Minister of Finance, would take steps to review the Public Service, identify those who are redundant, eliminate such positions in staffing and save the nation huge costs. The President said nothing about it.
I expected to hear that those who had been employed corruptly, were not qualified and were appointed only because they were being rewarded for being members of the ruling party or relatives and so on, would be identified and eliminated from the Public Service so that the nation can possess a sleek and trim Public Service effective and efficient. The savings from such an exercise would then be diverted to providing the necessary services to masses of our people in squatter camps, in the rural countryside and so on. The President said nothing about it.
We believe that anyone who is committed to fighting corruption must start by eliminating the corrupt act of paying, month after month, individuals who are not qualified, but were appointed without any regard for their qualifications and who only consume but are not delivering anything on the agenda of the nation. I have listened to all of these speeches here, good speeches, about what needs to be done. The secret is not in what colourful promises you make. It is in what practical, hard steps you take to convert them into a hard reality that people can benefit from. It is not helpful to make all these colourful promises.
It is quite alarming that the Deputy Auditor-General recently said that government - both national and provincial - had spent more than R102 billion on consultants between the 2008-09 and 2010-11 financial years.
A staggering R102 billion was spent on consultants because relatives, friends and concubines who are employed have no qualifications to do their work. [Applause.] It is not my Deputy Auditor-General who said this, it is the government's appointed Deputy Auditor-General who says this is what has been done by your government. So, the Auditor-General also revealed ...