Mr Speaker, hon President, hon Members of Parliament, the UDM extends its good wishes to President Nelson Mandela and his family. It is 21 years since his historic release from prison. It is remarkable and quite appropriate that he has experienced nearly as many years of freedom as he did imprisonment.
The President devoted much attention to the question of job creation. We are in agreement with placing job creation at the centre of government's strategies.
One of the single biggest underlying factors contributing to high unemployment is the state of the education system. The South African population is sorely lacking in the relevant levels of education and skills associated with a flourishing economy. The truth is that even our basic literary and numeracy levels are far below that of most nations. The result of this situation is that even as we talk about creating jobs, we are failing to produce the relevant skills to adequately fill these positions. To make an analogy, we are building cars, but we are not training drivers.
In the broadest sense of the word, education is about providing every citizen with the skills to become a fully fledged and productive member of the society. In our case, we cannot claim that South Africa is succeeding in this.
Another long-neglected economic matter is small business. Sadly, the President's address was vague on this subject. The amalgamation of a number of government agencies, dealing with small business finance, will not of itself change anything. Neither have we seen any real injection of government spending to promote small enterprise development.
It is crucial that the billions set aside to encourage large industrial projects should be boosted by similar amounts to promote and advance upcoming entrepreneurs. The industrial and corporate giants of tomorrow are the small businesses that we nurture today. Small business is also an example of where our education system is failing. Entrepreneurship is a critical element in any long-term solution to unemployment crisis. But our education system and the overall institutional framework of government does very little to promote and reward entrepreneurship amongst schoolchildren and the youth. Instead, we are seeing the rise of the instant millionaires. With increasing regularity, we witness the bling culture of fast cars and eating sushi off half-naked women, which celebrates extravagance and impulsiveness.
What we need is an education system and media that celebrate industriousness, initiative and self-discipline; to establish a culture that celebrates hard work and dedication - and more than just decent work, but also decency in work.
The nation is suffocating in the many unfulfilled promises made by the ruling party. The nation has had more than enough of promises on job creation and the provision of quality education.
Ngwana ge a nyanya monwana sebaka se se telele, o tsenwa ke bolwet?i bja hlogwana. Re lapile go nyanya monwana wa ANC. Ke a leboga. [Legoswi.] [We can't keep on waiting for endless unfulfilled promises. We have had enough. I thank you. [Applause.]]