Mr Speaker, the President's announcements on the massive investment in infrastructure have been widely welcomed in all quarters, both locally and internationally. It gave rise to both hope and celebration for ordinary South Africans, as well as to tenderpreneurs who are celebrating the prospect of increased profits through corrupt deals. Like vultures, they will soon descend on the beneficiary provinces where development is being targeted.
Mr President, while your plans are paved with noble intentions, the very cadres the party deployed to implement those plans are not supporting your vision.
The National Development Plan identifies widespread corruption as one of the nine central challenges to growth and development. For this reason, we were particularly disappointed that in your 90-minute speech, you dedicated less than two minutes to anticorruption strategies.
A Transparency International Corruption report released in the last quarter of last year places South Africa in the 64th place, on a par with Georgia. We have slipped back 32 places since 1998. We are clearly moving backwards in the fight against corruption. This is a war we simply cannot afford to lose.
Mr President, you promised in your first state of the nation address that you would pay particular attention to combating corruption and fraud in procurement and tender processes, but since then 83% of South Africans have come to believe that corruption is a way of life in South Africa.
Minister Patel said yesterday in this House that we have learnt the lessons from the past experiences of the World Cup and from the building of Medupi and Kusile power stations. What the Minister did not mention is that Medupi is being delayed and threatening our energy security because of problems with the boiler contract.
That contract is with Hitachi Power Africa, in which the ANC's fundraising department, Chancellor House, has a 25% stake. Mr President, will you give this House the assurance that Chancellor House will no longer have any stake in any company benefitting from this infrastructure build programme? Will you not accept, Mr President, that all your government's attempts to successfully implement redress and redistribution to the poor are being diluted by the very same cadres that the ANC deployed to government departments across the country?
Will you not accept, Mr President, that all the noble attempts to create jobs, increase infrastructure and investment and provide better service delivery, are being weakened by the high rate of corruption in our country?
There are countless examples of corruption in every ANC-run province and not a single day passes in our country where the media and the opposition do not expose corrupt activities of public servants stealing from the poor.
Like a cancer, corruption is becoming an entrenched norm in our society. The belief that the purpose of holding government office is to dispense patronage or to enrich oneself has led to a culture of corruption.
The current system of procurement is far too secretive. Tenders are adjudicated in the dark behind closed doors. This is where the vultures wait to feed. Open up those doors, Mr President, and make the system more transparent in the same manner the City of Cape Town has done.
I want to challenge you, Mr President, to use your reply to issue a very stern warning to those vultures, irrespective of which Minister they may be friends with, that you will ensure that stern action is taken against them, and that such a warning will be followed up with real action.
Mr President, declare once and for all an end to your party's disastrous policy of cadre deployment, which gives a leg-up to the elite and steals from the poor. Take the nation and the world into your confidence and give them hope that you have the political will to end corruption in South Africa. I thank you. [Applause.]
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: Mr Speaker, hon President, what do the people of South Africa need at present? They need hope for the future. On my desk I have a slogan that says:
The poorest of all persons is not the person without a cent, but the person without a dream.
Die President en sprekers in hierdie debat het almal oor hul drome vir die toekoms gepraat. [The President and speakers in this debate all spoke about their dreams for the future.]
Sir, do not make small plans, because they do not have the magic to stir people's blood. In the President's address there are big plans and big dreams for 2030. The FF Plus welcomes the infrastructure announcements. This is a sign of long-term planning and thus gives some hope for the future.
What is the most dangerous thing a government can do? It is to create expectations with citizens which cannot be realised - a recipe for revolutions. Real leadership and statesmanship is that rare combination of the idealistic, on the one side, with the severely practical on the other side.
Why did the World Cup projects succeed? It was because there were deadlines; unnecessary red tape was avoided; the best people for the projects were used; and black empowerment rules and labour rules were applied flexibly.
Is the government prepared to do the same? Or are we going to get stuck in the current climate of corruption, self-enrichment, inflexible labour laws, ineffectiveness and populist debates about nationalisation?
Let me mention two examples. Mining and agriculture have the potential to create thousands of employment opportunities. Why have these two specifically performed poorly recently? Is it per chance that the calls for nationalisation from amongst the ANC are directed at specifically mines and agricultural land? It is estimated that South Africa has mineral riches of $2,5 trillion. This is the mineral wealth of Australia and Russia combined. Yet South Africa's mining sector is in decline. South Africa's mining sector shrunk at a rate of 1% a year while mining sectors in other countries grew by 5% a year on average.
The past week's comments by the President against the nationalisation of mines brought more certainty. If the ANC's policy conference takes the correct decision in June, I predict good growth in the mining sector. But in the same week, the President repeated the statement that the willing- buyer, willing-seller option has not been the best way to address the land restitution question. In plain language, it means that government believes in the nationalisation of agricultural land. Where there is now more certainty in the mining sector, there is less certainty in the agricultural sector.
Mnr die President, enigeen wat met die herverdeling van grond te doen het, kan vir u aantoon dat die probleem nie by die gewillige koper, gewillige verkoper-beginsel l nie. Die probleem is die rampspoedige manier waarop grondhervorming toegepas word. Op my lessenaar is talle briewe van wit kommersile boere wat hul grond aanbied aan die departement, maar geen reaksie ontvang nie. Daar is talle briewe van kommersile boere wat koopkontrakte met die departement gesluit het en na drie jaar bankrot gespeel het, omdat die departement nie die geld uitbetaal het nie. (Translation of Afrikaans paragraph follows.)
[Mr President, anyone who deals with the redistribution of land will be able to show you that the problem does not lie with the willing buyer, willing seller principle. Rather, the problem lies with the disastrous way in which land reform is being implemented. On my desk are several letters from white commercial farmers who had offered their land to the department, without receiving any response. There are many letters from commercial farmers who entered into purchase agreements with the department and who became bankrupt after three years, as the department did not pay out the money.]
The President quoted in his address the Department of Rural Development's figures on land reform. According to figures, white people possessed 87% of the land and the government had reached only 8% of its 30% target. Sir, I seriously differ from these figures, as do I seriously differ with the statement that white people had stolen their land. I know the emotions around that.
Land is a very emotional issue, which has led to numerous wars. The President asked for a national dialogue about this issue. Such a discussion cannot be undertaken with propaganda facts, twisted history and emotional slogans.
Next week, this book, which I brought along, titled Disputed Land, will be released by Prof Louis Changuion. It deals with the land issue dating back from 1600 up to the present.
The ANC readily speaks of black people in general and Africans in particular. Sir, in the past Africans in particular never lived in the whole of South Africa. The Bantu-speaking people moved down from the equator, while the white people moved up from the Cape to meet each other at the Kei River. There is sufficient proof that there were no Bantu- speaking people in the Western Cape and north-western Cape. These parts form 40% of South Africa's land surface.
There are also differences of opinion about the influence of the Difaqane on land ownership. Read the diaries of the Voortrekkers about what they found when they moved into the interior. These are the things that we must debate. How does the department calculate the 8%? There isn't a completed land audit against which we could correlate these facts.
What does the ANC mean by saying 30% of land is in the hands of black people? Does it include state and urban land? It is accepted that the state owns about 25% of the total land surface. State land surely is not white land; 25% of the land should then be added to the 8%.
What about the Ingonyama Trust land of the Zulu king, of more than 2,8 million hectares? Where is this and all the other communal land added?
Mr Ramaphosa and Minister Tokyo Sexwale recently bought a number of farms from white farmers. My source in Vryburg informed me that a company of Minister Sexwale recently bought 30 farms in that area. This also surely has to be added to the 8%. In the Karoo and Kalahari, huge farms are available. Why does the department not buy some of that land to reach their 30% more quickly? These semi-desert lands are however added to the 87% propaganda percentage on the white side.
The Development Bank calculated in 2001 that 44% of the land belongs to whites, 20% to blacks, 9% to brown people and 1% to Asians. The way in which the department had calculated the 30% and 8% figures creates the impression that they are setting themselves up for failure.
I said land is an emotional issue, as you can hear, but there is goodwill out there from farmers to solve it. Propaganda figures will not bring us to answers. Realistic debates with real figures and history will help.
The size of arable land under production dropped by 30% from 1994 up to 2009. Failed land reform, where nine out of 10 farms are not successful, played a role in this. Farmers now have to produce more food on less land for South Africa's population of 50 million.
I agree with Mr Nkwinti when he said it does not help to merely chase after hectares. If the land does not produce food, we will have famine very shortly and then people will be running in the streets, as happened recently in Mozambique.
In 2000, Zimbabwean farmers produced two million tons of maize. Last year, following land reforms, they produced only 900 000. In 2000 Zimbabwe had 250 000 tons of grain. Last year they only had 10 000 tons. It was not as a result of drought. During the same time, Zambia grew to where it had started exporting maize.
I want to refer to a quote by Mondli Makhanya that he wrote in the Sunday Times, which I used in a debate in the Cabinet lekgotla. He said:
We are wasting valuable time and energy trying to restore people to their peasant ways. Ordinary South Africans want to go to cities and work in the modern economy. Large-scale, highly mechanised commercial farming is now the way of the world. You cannot turn the clock back. That's the reality. Furthermore, the young people have, as has happened elsewhere, simply upped and headed for the towns and cities. Yet we continue to nurse the notion that we can reverse the inevitable march to an urban future. The money and energy that is spent on getting peasants back into subsistence farming would be better used to create a strong class of black commercial farmers who actually do farm for commercial rather than sentimental reasons.
I dream of white and black commercial farmers who do not have to go elsewhere in Africa for opportunities. The children who were born in 1994 are 18 years old this year and can vote. They only know an ANC government. There is no reason why such a child should not be able to buy a farm or obtain a bursary, just because he/she is white or black. Yet this is still happening.
Ek wil hier kennis gee dat die VF Plus 'n spesiale taaldebat gaan aanvra oor die permanente aanslag teen Afrikaans en die agteruitgang van al die inheemse tale in Afrika. [I hereby want to give notice that the FF Plus will be calling for a language debate on the permanent onslaught against Afrikaans and the deterioration of all the indigenous languages in Africa.]
In politics one finds small people and great people. Small people are opportunistic and they talk and gossip about other people. Great people talk and dream about ideas and the future. In 2030, if we look back at this debate, we will be able to determine who was busy with opportunistic small politicking and who was busy with realistic future plans in the interests of all. These are the dreams that are important to all of us, and this is what the FF Plus will be busy with in the next term. Thank you very much. [Applause.]