Thank you, Chair, for protecting me. South Africa is known as one of the countries with the largest inequality gap between the poor and the rich. Approximately 57% of individuals living in South Africa are below the income poverty line. The vulnerable groups are the rural poor, female- headed households, Aids orphans, people with disabilities, farm workers, and the unemployed. They are the ones affected. I therefore plead with the government to really listen to and hear the plight of our people.
As some of my colleagues here today will know, I am an evangelist, and I would like therefore to start by quoting three verses from Ecclesiastes 9:14-16 in the Bible: There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
Sometimes I wish that King Solomon was here to guide us with his wisdom, so that we as the leaders of today could learn and understand that the true value of humanity is not measured by our status and our belongings.