Hon Speaker, Mr President, Mr Deputy President, colleagues and hon members, I have never seen members looking as glum in previous state of the nation addresses as in this particular debate. [Laughter.]
Mr President, in your address to us on Thursday, you gave our country a bold, detailed statement and a clear line of active march. You outlined some of the key features of a massive and integrated infrastructure build and maintenance programme that will help to catalyse a new, more shared, more job-creating growth path in our country, and indeed across our region.
It is a programme that has been developed and that will continue to be driven by the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, PICC, chaired by yourself with the Deputy President as the deputy convenor. The PICC involves Ministers, all nine premiers, metro mayors and the SA Local Government Association, Salga. It is not a new institution so much as a different way of doing things.
This is the developmental state at work in the midst of a mixed economy. Some of the programmes that you announced in the state of the nation address are not new. They have often lingered on in limbo. In many cases - the massive Waterberg development is an example - delays have been caused by private sector players that are not keen to be first movers. They have asked the legitimate question: If I invest in a mine will I have water, electricity and a rail line to get my commodity to the port?
The PICC's intervention provides certainty and co-ordination. Without a determined and strategic state, key resources will not be unlocked. The PICC draws its inspiration in part from what we learnt in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup. There was much scepticism, which still prevails in these quarters, about our ability as a country to be ready with transport, information and communication technology, and with sporting infrastructure. Indeed, without the leadership of the state, through the Local Organising Committee, deadlines would not have been met, and co-ordination between spheres of government, state-owned enterprises, SOEs and the private sector would not have happened.
The PICC is also about effective planning and phasing. In the build-up to the 2010 World Cup we saw a significant increase in construction jobs and construction sector activity. When the event was over, there was a slump in activity and, of course, a consequent loss of jobs. This time we need to ensure that we have a sustained and phased approach so that we have what we are calling an infrastructure pipeline with a continuous flow of projects. In this way, we can also ensure that we shepherd potentially scarce resources like steel, cement, bitumen and, critically and above all, our engineering and other related skills.
Mr President, this is a bold plan that you announced on Thursday and it threw the DA into complete disarray. The hon Mazibuko had already prepared her responses. "Not bold enough", she said. Her mentor, Premier Zille, begged to differ. In fact, the hon Mazibuko was out of step with the whole of South Africa. [Laughter.] Business, the social movements and the labour sector all warmly welcomed this bold plan.
International comments from Bloomberg, the Financial Times and other quarters were also extremely favourable. An often cynical local media also overwhelmingly welcomed this announcement. "Zuma unveils a massive industrialisation plan", was the Friday morning headline of one newspaper. "Zuma's bold jobs plan. Big projects for provinces", was another headline.
So how did the Leader of the Opposition, the hon Mazibuko, initially respond? She said that the speech failed to give South Africa a bold plan. I am not sure if you know him, Mr President, but even the cynical William Saunderson Meyer, who proudly entitles his weekly column Jaundiced Eye, felt that the hon Mazibuko was overdoing the jaundiced cynicism. [Laughter.] He wrote that, to commit R300 billion - and he was underestimating - to infrastructural spending - the equivalent of two and a half world cup events - is bold indeed.
Having snookered themselves in this way, the DA had to go back to the drawing board. They spent the whole weekend rewriting the carefully crafted speeches that they had prepared and which were now all dead in the water. [Laughter.] What we have had over these last two days of debate, Mr President, has been the DA, and also of course many of the other opposition parties, doing a very poorly camouflaged back flip, a very clumsy backward somersault.
Just about all of them began their speeches with varying degrees of honesty, conviction and reluctance. "We welcome your bold plan, Mr President", they said. Then, of course, there were the buts, and all of the buts amounted to saying, "but you didn't say enough about my pet project."
The hon James was a case in point. He said that this is the greatest expansion in government spending that we have seen. Actually it is amongst the greatest expenditures on infrastructure in the world. This is exactly what has enabled us to survive through a difficult global recession and which will help us to get out of the recession. Then comes the hon James' but, "But, there's nothing about skills."
I don't know if it's a tin ear or ideological "oogklappies" [blinkers] that enables you to come to this conclusion. I don't know if you were listening to what was said. [Laughter.]
Transnet, for instance, has set aside R7,7 billion for artisanal training as part and parcel of this infrastructure plan. It is not just about infrastructure; it's about a totality of integrated approaches, including skills. R300 million has been set aside for the initial beginning of the universities in the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga. Eskom and so on. We can quote many other figures.
Mr President, all of these buts reminded me of the training I received when I was in exile, preparing to come back into the country to do underground work. My handler said to me, "Look, you are likely to get captured. It happens. You are going to be interrogated and tortured and it's very difficult to say nothing at all when you are being tortured. You are going to say things. But whatever you say, say nothing!" [Laughter.] That was the advice. [Laughter.]
That is exactly what has been happening. We have been hearing lots and lots of talk, but they have been saying nothing. [Applause.] [Laughter.]
"Empty tin drums", as the hon Minister Motshekga has said. We say that we have a shortage of so much, a backlog of so much, and they tell us we've got a shortage of so much and a backlog of so much. Like empty tin drums, they simply echo things that we have said. [Laughter.]
The hon Kilian rambled on pathetically, trying to suggest that the state of the nation address was really about the ANC's elective conference in Mangaung. Congratulations! I am really pleased that the hon Kilian knows when the ANC's national elective conference is happening. She even knows the venue of the annual elective conference of the ANC. The ANC's national elective conference will be in Mangaung in December 2012. I wonder if the hon Kilian has the foggiest idea when Cope's elective conference is going to happen! [Laughter.] [Applause.]
Mr President, in your state of the nation address you referred to three deep-seated structural challenges. These are the three interrelated, systemic crises that cut across our economy and our society. Firstly, you mentioned poverty. You didn't say it, but let me say it as a white and, I hope, also as a red South African, that poverty is strongly racialised and is marked by gendered realities and geographical characteristics.
Secondly, you spoke of unemployment, which is not just cyclical unemployment fluctuating with growth cycles, but deep-rooted structural unemployment at crisis levels.
Thirdly, you mentioned inequality, which is related to the above and which continues to be marked by structural determinants, like where you are born, the colour of your skin and your gender. All of these realities create a very strong statistical probability of whether you will live in poverty, be employed or not, and therefore on what side of this huge inequality gap you will continue to live.
Interestingly, in her Sunday Times article this weekend, in response to your state of the nation address, the hon Mazibuko appeared momentarily to be agreeing with you, Mr President. She wrote, and I quote, "I agree with the President's diagnosis of South Africa's problems, that they are related to poverty, unemployment." And? There wasn't an "and"! She left out "inequality". Now, she will say that was an accident, but it's not accidental because the DA does not believe in a more equal society, but in an equal opportunity society. That is a very, very, very different thing indeed. If you don't believe me, have a look at the DA's official website. Click on the icon which says Our Policies, and then scroll down to the Open Society. [Interjections.]