Deputy Speaker, hon President, hon Deputy President, hon members, the ACDP commends President Zuma on his state of the nation address with its focus on growing the economy, as well as the huge expenditure on a number of infrastructure projects, such as rail, road transport and ports. These ambitious plans undoubtedly bring hope to the nation faced with high levels of poverty and unemployment.
The challenge will be financing and implementing these huge projects. It is, therefore, crucial for government to create a sufficiently enabling environment for investors, entrepreneurs and manufacturers, rather than create an obstruction to doing business. Government will have to ensure that we have the necessary skills for these projects and that endemic state corruption and incompetence are also addressed.
Equally important, government will have to safeguard against tenderpreneurs who unlawfully exploit the rich pickings that these massive infrastructure projects present. Being politically well-connected must not be allowed to replace honest, hard work, such as what we have seen in Limpopo.
We also welcome the undertaking to reduce the cost of doing business by addressing high port and electricity costs. The Reserve Bank Governor, Gill Marcus, has already expressed concern about the impact of administered prices, such as electricity tariffs, warning that above inflation electricity price increases should not be allowed to inhibit growth and investment. Addressing such costs will go some way in ensuring that South Africa becomes more competitive globally. However, increased productivity remains the key for increased competitiveness.
The ACDP welcomes Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu's confirmation at last week's Mining Indaba that nationalisation was not a viable option for the country. Regrettably, hon President, the debate on nationalisation and regulatory uncertainty has curbed investments in the mining sector in South Africa. South Africa has mineral wealth equal to that of Australia and Russia combined, yet the sector is declining mainly due to regulatory uncertainty, government incapacity, infrastructure constraints and a lack of suitably skilled personnel.
We need to ensure that other challenges facing the mining sector, such as increased costs and now alternative proposals, such as increased taxes, resources rent and more state intervention, do not further damage the mining sector, which is so crucial to growing the economy and creating jobs, not only for South Africa, but also for the Southern African Development Community, SADC, region.
We regret that more was not said regarding the crucial role that small business has to play. This is the real place to grow the economy and create jobs. Hon President, more needs to be done to support small businesses; for example, by reducing regulatory bottlenecks and red tape to reduce the cost of doing business and to facilitate easier access to soft loans.
What was surprising from the President's speech, though, was to hear him praising teachers' unions, which he claimed heeded the call to teachers to be in school, in class, on time, teaching for at least seven hours a day. I believe that most parents and schoolchildren would dispute the President's claim.
If teachers were teaching at least seven hours a day, then South Africa would not regularly find itself at the bottom or near the bottom in international rankings for literacy, numeracy and science. If the President's claims were true, then Graeme Block, the so-called education expert at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, would not be saying that 80% of schools are dysfunctional and that half of all pupils drop out of school before taking their final matric exams. The SA Democratic Teachers' Union, SADTU, which usually calls for strike action during school hours, must take some responsibility for the fact that only 15% of our students get grades good enough to qualify for university.
If the President is truly concerned about the education of our children, then he should challenge members of SADTU, who have called for schools to be shut down in support of Cosatu's protest against the e-toll system, to stop their planned action to chalk down. The ACDP does not want our children to be prejudiced any longer because of teachers striking during school hours.
Despite evidence that corruption is increasing in South Africa, the President did not say much about government's plans to fight this scourge, save to welcome Cosatu's launch of Corruption Watch. Yesterday, members of the Portfolio Committee on Police were stunned by what was revealed during a presentation made by top management, regarding leases by the SAPS. While it was made clear to us that the SAPS does not negotiate the leasing of any building, as the Department of Public Works does it on their behalf, we were, nevertheless, shocked by the top management's ignorance of the terms and conditions of the leases they are paying for.
By way of example, they could not explain why they were paying exorbitant rates for leasing space, such as paying R1 292 per square metre for space for a period of 99 years. This, we believe, is wasteful expenditure by the police and should be investigated. It was, therefore, not surprising to hear the Minister of Public Works saying that his department is in chaos and is dysfunctional, with no hope of achieving a clean audit at the end of this financial year.
We were informed that police officers who dealt with the Department of Public Works regarding the leases in question have since resigned or gone on early pension, and we cannot help but wonder why.
The ACDP believes that both the Department of Police and the Department of Public Works should be investigated. Those found guilty of corruption and benefiting illegally from state tenders should not only be punished and taught that crime does not pay, but they should also make restitution by paying back what they have stolen, with interest. If such drastic action is not taken, then I believe the cancer of corruption will never be eradicated in our country.
It is equally shocking that the Special Investigating Unit, SIU, has admitted, in response to the ACDP question during the parliamentary briefing last year that the level of fraud and corruption in the state procurement process is between R25 and R30 billion per year.
Hon President, we must ensure that all crime fighting units, such as the SIU and the Hawks, have sufficient capacity and funding to successfully investigate and prosecute incidents of corruption in the public sector and, where necessary, recover the stolen and misappropriated funds. It is imperative that the SIU's enabling legislation is amended to give it full legal standing to bring civil cases to recover stolen state funds.
The ACDP questions the President's argument for wanting to review the powers of the Constitutional Court after he said, "it is after experiencing that some of the decisions are not decisions that every other judge in the Constitutional Court agrees with." The President further asked, "How could you say that the judgment is absolutely correct when the judges themselves have different views about it?"
The ACDP questions the logic of a President who questions the logic of having split judgments. Does he expect judges to become rubber stamps of government's decisions, or to sit on the bench just to endorse rulings that they may not agree with?
I want to remind the President that decisions by the Constitutional Court need not be unanimous. A simple majority prevails if there is a legal quorum. In a split decision, the will of the majority of the judges is binding, and one member of the majority delivers the opinion of the court itself. One or more members of the minority can also write a dissent, which is a critical explanation of the minority's reasons for not joining the majority decision.
While the ACDP welcomes a healthy debate around the powers of state bodies and their effectiveness, we, nevertheless, reject what appears to be the President's encroaching and attempts to interfere in the work of the Constitutional Court. If he succeeds in reducing the powers of the Constitutional Court, he might begin targeting other courts, just as his comrade, President Robert Mugabe, has been doing for a number of years.