Chairperson, His Excellency the President of the Republic of South Africa, hon Deputy President, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, let me start by acknowledging the contribution made by Mama Sisulu to our struggle for liberation.
The ANC has tasked me to speak on sustainable development. I will focus on working together with our communities for sustainable development and mobilising our people to understand and embrace the agenda of a developmental state.
We debate The Presidency Budget Vote today, fresh from heavily contested local government elections. Service delivery featured more prominently in the election campaign, compared to all the others that we have experienced. Every political party poster was about service delivery. The difference was in the service delivery approach presented in the messages of the different political parties. A careful analysis of each of the messages reveals two key underlying ideologies and messages held by each of the parties. The first shows the kind of state each party believes South Africa to be, and the second points to the kind of society each party would build if voted into power.
I will not waste this House's valuable time and talk to election messages of those parties that did not present a service delivery approach. Any one of these, in my view, has no relevance to sustainable development and the developmental state. I am therefore going to unpack the message of the DA as well as that of the ANC. In doing this I hope to highlight the differences between the two. The message of the DA was "service delivery for all". Well, it sounds very convincing, doesn't it? It is a very well crafted message that puts the DA head and shoulders above the rest. Let us look a little deeper though. In the first instance the key word that explains the service delivery approach in the message of the DA is the word "for".
The service delivery approach presented by the DA is that of a government that provides "for" the people. The government does for the communities and no mention is made of the role or involvement of communities in that delivery. In this approach and ideology, communities remain passive beneficiaries of services provided by government. Communities are dependent on government. Government knows all their needs and will provide for all of them all the time. [Interjections.]
Also prominent in the message of the DA was the emphasis on good governance. You must not hear me wrong here. There is nothing wrong with clean governance, but if you listen carefully to the DA message, you will notice once again that it makes no mention of the end, which is the eradication of poverty and community development. [Applause.] It clearly shows that the DA does not subscribe to developmental local government. It does not seek to involve the community in their development, but comes along as a know-it-all, charitable state which dishes out to a community living on handouts from the state.
For the DA, the means is greater than the end. As long as the administration is clean and government delivers for all, it is fine. This is the welfare state that the DA wishes South Africa to become. It is an undesirable and an unsustainable end indeed. [Laughter.] Together we should rise against this archaic mentality because it will take us backwards.
On the other hand, the message of the ANC - working together to build communities - is loud, clear and cannot be faulted. [Interjections.]