Madam Deputy Speaker, the President of the Republic, His Excellency Jacob Zuma, the Deputy President, the Speaker of the National Assembly, members of the executive, Members of Parliament and guests, good evening.
We will be doing ourselves an injustice if we do not understand the historical context in which state-owned enterprises were conceived in South Africa by the apartheid government. At the time, the apartheid government gave the developmental mandate to SOEs. They were used as primary tools for industrialisation and they were an essential ingredient of government's industrial strategy at the time.
Through SOEs, government assumed the dominant role in the key infrastructure industries like rail, air and sea transport, telecommunications, water, coal-based synthetic fuels, nuclear energy as well as iron and steel production.
The state also viewed these industries as key instruments for industrialisation, employment creation and economic development. One should not forget that the colour bar was in effect at the time: You had to be white in order to get a job in an SOE.
It is so fundamental, but it's so surprising when we hear the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament and all the other speakers saying that SOEs are not working due to the ANC's cadre deployment policy. But, during apartheid, I didn't hear them saying the same thing, because these were used as tools to make sure that we were further exploited, and then ...