... ngoba abantu besifazane yibona ababaluleke kakhulu ... [Ubuwelewele.]
USIHLALO WENDLU WESIKHASHANA (Mnu M R Mdakane): Mhlonishwa, ngizama ukukusiza kulabantu ababanga umsindo, amalungu abanga umsindo asisezwa ngempela ukuthi ukhuluma uthini. Sicela amalungu athi ukwehlisa kancane umsindo. (Translation of isiZulu paragraphs follows.)
[Prince B Z ZULU: Chairperson, Minister for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and his Deputy, hon people present here and the Members of Parliament who are here today, today marks nine days before the big day that made a mark in the history of our youth and of the country, June 16.
Your department, hon Minister, did not exist 15 years ago, but it was created to correct the huge damage caused by apartheid policy that had divided the settlement areas of the people of this country, where some people lived in the urban areas while others lived in the rural areas.
I have come to speak broadly about these rural areas that constitute 13% of the land which was meant for black people to live on and the whole lot of land would be used by those who were in government. The rural land was administered by the chiefs who were living with their people, who constituted about 43% of the population, and who were discriminated against, with no opportunities to advance their lives, but who did everything they could to survive on that 13% of land.
As the ANC we support this budget because the people have mandated the ANC to do the things they want. And even with the recent election people were still emphasising that the ANC knows the people's needs, and therefore it must go on working. Our people knew very well that the land is the heritage that they can live on, and they did not depend on somebody else for their livelihood.
They lived on the soil that produced food to the extent that where there was a surplus they would give it to other people who did not have food. They did not live selfishly in order to become rich, but they distributed to other people as well.
The chief and his executive had powers to confiscate fields that had not been used for three years so that somebody else could use them to produce food that would be enough for themselves and others around them.
The rural people need this budget so that it can revive this issue of land that was expropriated, so that the land can be returned to our people - this fertile land that can produce food so that our people can sustain themselves.
There are many women and youth in the rural areas. The youth is the backbone of this country. If we do not invest in the youth, this country has no future.
Therefore, all our hopes are on the youth; we need to make our plans with the rural youth in mind. The rural youth study and pass matric in their thousands, and then start a big exodus to look for greener pastures in the urban areas.
When these people come here it causes a big problem which puts pressure on the government; does this really not cause the enormous problems and the construction of squatter camps that we do not know how to get rid of? And then those who oppose us as the ANC say that people strike because the government cannot deliver services to them.
But you will note that the people who are from the rural areas are being used when they are here; they are taken advantage of and they cause damage, under the pretext that the government is not delivering services to the people. We should stop them from coming to the urban areas by developing those areas where they live because we can live off the land.
Your department, hon Minister, is faced with a big challenge of developing people in the rural areas. Many people are living in abject poverty, especially the women and the youth. You are surprised when you get to a house in a rural area and find that only an old granny receives a pension which is the only source of income. And she would be living with 13 children without birth certificates who were left by their mothers. And those mothers do not have birth certificates themselves - they go and work on the farms and come back with babies and dump them there. These people who are dumped here are living in a mud house.
The ANC knows this, but others do not know such misery and that there are such things happening in the rural areas, which the ANC government needs to correct.
Agriculture needs to be taught in schools because unless we talk of the fact that there is no revival of the soil, we cannot progress. But if we can start by ensuring co-operation between your department and the Department of Education and have an agricultural programme which will be taught in schools, the gardens at schools will not look like they were cultivated to punish the learners, which results in the youth being disgusted by working the soil as they feel that gardening is for punishing people.
When the rural women request assistance with the provision of fencing, they say they are told to go and draw up a business plan for gardening. After they submit their business plan, they are told to wait. Two years will pass without any assurance of whether the business plan has been approved or not.
That needs to be corrected because there is no need for a group of 10 women to draw up a business plan to cultivate a vegetable garden. That must be rectified, hon Minister, and it is only the ANC that can rectify this - no other party can do it. If the rural people can get the support in respect of the programmes that they dream about in the areas where they are, the products they produce with their hands can transform their lives. They can train their youth; they do not need much of that support thus far.
When waking up in the morning as a parent, you know that your child is doing this and that. A child should be part of what will keep him alive in the home. And when the parent leaves this earth, the child is well trained and knows that his parent liked this and that. Therefore, if the womenfolk can be fully supported, they will have a big influence in training our youth.
If we speak about rural women and the youth, we think that they need this and that. You see, hon Mazibuko on the other side speaks about rural areas without having sufficient knowledge of those areas; she speaks without knowing what the rural areas are and how painful it is to be there; where a child cannot just wake up and go to school without having to fetch water first; where children wash in the same basin before going to school because there is not enough water. You do not know that kind of life, but we are talking about something that we know; a life that we grew up in - we know how painful that life is.
The National Rural Youth Service Corps, Narysec, is a programme aimed at developing our youth and it is also a great idea because it is not party partisan. When distributing the lists of vacancies, a simple thing is done, hon Minister they are sent to all the municipalities to be distributed to the youth. The youth put in applications and are employed in that programme.
We are, therefore, ensuring that this programme continues, hon Minister, because most of the youth are in the rural areas. After being trained, we can then deploy them to different areas to train the other youth. There is remuneration where our children are training - they must come back and train every other youth who is still at home and we should not resolve that it is only the first group that needs to be trained only to later find out that the numbers are low. Because when they come back and are given the large numbers, those numbers will be multiplied with those that are riding on your back, hon Minister.
If this programme can continue, we can be sure that ...