Thank you, hon Chairperson. Hon Minister and chairperson of our committee, I followed both of your speeches in my office, so I know exactly what you said. I was in a good mood - I even followed hon Van den Berg's speech.
The fact of the matter, hon Deputy Minister, is that twice in your speech you referred to the quote from the Freedom Charter that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white."
Now, if something belonged to all of us, then all of us should have a say in it. We should all have a say in what should happen in this country, and that is exactly what is not happening. We are paying lip service to nation- building.
You asked and you expected us to get involved in the celebration of the ANC's centenary. I can understand that you feel very strongly about that, but you must also understand that we are a multiparty democracy.
There are 12 political parties in this Parliament whose members do not belong to the ANC. If we all were to agree to your interpretation of the past, we would all be members of the ANC, which we are not.
If we are serious with regard to social cohesion, with regard to nation- building, then we must take seriously the words that have just been spoken by our colleague, Oom Koos Kganyago of the UDM, when he said that Arts and Culture was at the heart of nation-building; we were united in our diversity. That is exactly the problem: We use those words, but we are paying lip service to the idea.
We are failing South Africans in terms of nation-building by stumbling from one sporting event to the next. We do not recognise our true diversity.
I want to come to what the chairperson of the committee said with regard to name changes. Yes, of course, that is very important, but we should address the real issues. Nobody in South Africa - no one - is in favour of offensive names.
It is therefore a failed argument to argue that we must get rid of offensive names. Everybody agrees on that. But it is something else when you start to take away names that may be important to certain sections of our society. They may not be important to you, but I can assure you that they are important to other sections of the community.
Met alle respek aan die agb Van den Berg, hy moet hom nie heilig daaroor hou nie. Hy het presies dieselfde ges, maar sy party, die DA, is besig met dieselfde proses in Kaapstad, waar name van mense wat 'n bydrae gemaak het - vat vir Coen Steytler en ander - ook deur die DA geteiken en weggeneem word. Die VF Plus se benadering is baie eenvoudig. (Translation of Afrikaans paragraph follows.)
[With all due respect to the hon Van den Berg, he must not be self- righteous about this. He said exactly the same thing, but his party, the DA, is busy with the same process in Cape Town, where names of people who made a contribution - take Coen Steytler and others for example - are also being targeted by the DA and replaced. The approach of the FF Plus is very simple.]]
Let us add the names of those who have not been recognised. We do not have to take names away; it is not necessary in South Africa.