Chairperson, I am rising to express the IFP's support for this Budget Vote for the simple reason that the people we represent need the services which have been placed under the custodianship of this department.
The Minister made very good pronouncements during last year's Budget Vote debate and we supported him in the hope that he would exercise strong political and ethical leadership to steer his department towards the implementation of those pronouncements. Admittedly, one year in office is a short time to pass harsh judgement on the Minister's ability to achieve what he announced his department was going to do.
I come from a political tradition that says it is better not to make promises that cannot be fulfilled, because all you do is raise people's expectations and heighten their sense of frustration when such promises cannot be achieved. In fact, when that happens, you are actually insulting the intelligence of the people to whom such promises were made. I hope it is not going to be the leadership style of the Minister to employ tactics of deception to carry along those people who wait in hopeful expectation for what cannot be delivered. [Laughter.] In fact, I trust the hon Minister is going to make good the promissory note he gave to South Africans, especially those who live in underserviced areas of the country.
We support this Budget Vote in the hope that people living in rural areas are soon going to see tangible results of the promises and good intentions expressed to them last year. But, hope alone is not going to suffice in the long run. It is solid delivery on the ground which, in the final analysis, will cause people to say, "Ah ha, indeed we can see things turning for the better".
We praise the hon Minister for the bold initiatives he took in forcing cellphone operators to reduce interconnection rates. We can only hope that such a reduction is going to be passed on to ordinary South Africans. Similarly, we praise the Minister for the leadership role he played in the resolution of the painful saga which engulfed the South African Broadcasting Corporation, SABC, by ensuring that his department provided the financial guarantees and necessary support to enable the interim board and, later, the new and current board of the SABC in their daunting task of turning around and stabilising the SABC, to save this country from possible embarrassment, which would surely befall us if the SABC disintegrated ahead of the Fifa World Cup, which will commence in 52 days. We hope all the budgetary allocations to entities such as Sentech and Telkom will be money well spent on the extension of the national wireless broadband network and for the implementation of the Information Communications Technology, ICT, access network. These allocations should also fund the information and communications technologies infrastructure for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Similarly, one hopes that the budgetary allocations we are being called upon to approve will be worth the effort of making it available to the Universal Service and Access Fund to build capacity and to procure the necessary supporting infrastructure to expand ICT access to South Africans who live in underserviced areas as well as to complete the migration from an analogue to a digital technology platform.
We are mindful of the fact that in the 2010 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, this department was requested to include explicit savings initiatives in the strategic plan. This request to save was made with the proviso that existing, new and expanding frontline services would not be compromised over the next three years. This was done in the context of the painful fact that our country's economy was, like most other economies of the world, going through a difficult patch, which called for austerity measures from all of us.
It is very disappointing to say that this department has not gained the reputation of leading by example, especially on the part of the hon Minister. When all of us are called upon to tighten our belts, especially when even the poor are called upon to also make their patriotic efforts to moderate their demands and expectations, it flies painfully in the face of what we exhort people to do when we, and especially the hon Minister, have a reputation to the contrary.
It is, in fact, very disappointing for those of us who want the hon Minister to succeed when he hits the newspaper headlines for wrong and embarrassing reasons. We begin to wonder whether the savings projection reflected in this department's strategic plan is going to be achieved. Therefore, we make an earnest plea to the Minister to rise to the occasion of leading by example in this regard. I thank you. [Applause.]