Chairperson, thank you very much, and thank you very much, hon members, for your contributions and support. Let me say first that the support of what we call the transport family, which includes the national and provincial MECs, as well as the MMCs who deal with transport, is very tight, and we work very well together. This does start to show what has happened. We are building on the foundation that was laid in the past.
Hon member Ollis, I want to make it very clear here that the foundation that was laid by former Minister Mac Maharaj; by the late former Minister, Adv Dullah Omar; and by Minister Jeff Radebe is a solid foundation from which we move. [Applause.] There is no question of saying that it belonged to so and so. We are building on that. Whenever you start something new, there will always be problems. If you have never experimented with it, nonracialism itself is an experiment. There will be many pitfalls and so forth, but we know that nonracialism is correct. Similarly, a national, democratic, nonracial South Africa is something, I think, all of us should want to have. I think all of us should have this national consciousness. My heart bleeds when someone says we should have one province developing at the expense of another. We want Gauteng to be the hub. We want Gauteng to be the pathfinder, to be the economic hub, not only of South Africa but of Africa as a whole. The elected leadership of Gauteng comes from a progressive tradition founded by our forefathers from ... [Inaudible.] ... to now. It was the ANC who created what we now call a new country; a "new country". [Laughter.] Who created this new country?
We envisage that we will also reverse uneven development. Reversing uneven development doesn't mean that we say that Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban should halt. We say that out there in the Eastern Cape, in Sekhukhune and in Mpumalanga, development must come up. That is what we are saying.
Therefore, the decision that was taken by this House way back in 2007, long before the machines rolled in, was a decision that any Minister that was in charge had to take seriously, namely that there was an agreement called the Gauteng Freeway Development Programme. It didn't mean that there weren't going to be any problems, but we have now moved in, and that is why we say that in 2007 there was an agreement by all of us about the GFDP. When the problems arise, let us not go to the nearest door and say that the problem is someone else's problem. It is our problem; let's do as developed countries do, like the United States and China. When they experience problems, they analyse the problems, like the Deputy Minister was doing here. Let's analyse the problems. Where are the pitfalls? Where are the weaknesses? Then we can move forward from that and correct those problems.
Last year, President Obama said that the question on how to develop transport infrastructure should be answered. This was said by the president of one of the most advanced countries in the world. He is still asking that question. This year we are saying, through the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, that we will have an indaba which will include national, provincial and local government, the private sector - everyone - to find an answer to the question of how we fund our water resources, our rail infrastructure, our transport infrastructure and all other telecommunications infrastructure; all of it. Let us all come to that with progressive ideas as to whatever the pitfalls are. Let us then come to that situation and say that those are the specific problems that we see. Let us not be national when it suits us and then become regional and very local at other times. One member was saying that everybody knows that all roads lead to Gauteng. That is not the perspective of this government. The government says that it will reverse uneven development, but will not halt further advancement. [Interjections.] Yes, yes.
There should be a commitment in this House to one person, one vote, one value, meaning that a child in the Transkei, a child in Soweto and a child in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg should all take for granted that they will go to school, meaning that there will a road to their school, there will be water at school and there will be electricity at school. That is what one person, one vote, one value means. That is what we need to be doing. We should not then come - as we pass this budget - and say: Which road do you want stopped? Which project do you want stopped? If you have R20 billion to pay, it is already there, so it is not stolen. The road is there; you cannot roll it away like a carpet. Now, which project do you then need to stop in order to do that? I invite you to meet my colleagues in the provinces and say, "Eastern Cape, stop that" and to stop this one and that one.