Chairperson, the DA firmly supports the establishment of a national vision and long-term planning. However, consider the words of Alexis de Tocqueville when he described what kind of despotism democratic nations have to fear, and I quote:
Over these men stands an immense tutelary power, which assumes sole responsibility for securing their pleasure and watching over their fate. It is absolute, meticulous, regular, provident, and mild. It would resemble paternal authority if only its purpose were the same, namely, to prepare men for manhood. But on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them in childhood irrevocably. It likes citizens to rejoice, provided they think only of rejoicing. It works willingly for their happiness but wants to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and takes care of their needs, facilitates their pleasures, manages their most important affairs, directs their industry, regulates their successions, and divides their inheritances. Why not relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and the difficulty of living?
In the extract De Tocqueville describes the particular guise that despotism might take in future democratic states. His fear was that democracy would become a proxy for control and that the centralisation of power could produce a government the purpose of which was to manage, not merely the organs of state, but the private affairs of individuals.
De Tocqueville does not suggest this process is violent, but mild; and its realisation not sudden, but gradual. Little by little it robs each citizen of the use of his own faculties. The danger, then, lies in the fact that this threat is not immediately apparent. The primary challenge facing the citizens of any democratic state begins in recognising how it manifests itself contemporarily, and then in acting to counter its influence.
His warning is prescient and relevant still today. Central to this threat is the agenda of the ANC, its understanding of the role it plays in society and the manner in which its pursuit of power manifests itself in government thinking. Ideologically incapable of properly separating party and state and, through a policy of cadre deployment and a culture of nepotism, practically concerned with bending all key levers of power to its own will.
The ANC has overseen a decade-long destructive drive to centralise power. The result of this has been that those institutions designed both to deliver basic services, hon Stofile, and to act as a bulwark against an encroaching majority have seen their integrity systematically denuded. Against this background the ANC has proposed the establishment of a National Planning Commission.
The Green Paper, which sets out the vision that would underpin such an institution, has all the characteristics of the veiled intent that belies cadre deployment. It uses phrases like national interest and ideas such as a single national vision to detract from the way in which it would centralise control. It uses universal problems like poverty and HIV and Aids as the excuse to justify a series of possible interventions for it proposes no checks or balances.
Most disturbingly, and clearly underlying the entire Green Paper, is the assumption that the ANC would have been elected to power at every level. We know that that is not the case. Co-ordination and planning is not merely a matter of encouraging best democratic practice but of ensuring that ANC policy is adhered to and properly implemented.
Any proper and objective analysis of a National Planning Commission must interrogate the institution itself; in other words, the structure and powers of the mechanism as opposed to the intent of those individuals in charge of managing it. This distinction has not been properly made to date. In much the same fashion, one needs to draw a distinction between the National Planning Commission's ability to generate a co-ordinated plan and the power it may or may not have to implement that plan.
The Green Paper does not sufficiently address these latter two concerns. It talks in generics and uses imperatives such as poverty eradication to mask a less well-defined and possibly far more powerful set of political objectives, which are only ever hinted at. For example, the paper says things like:
The state has a leading role to play in reshaping the economy; our society needs more than coherent plans to shape our programmes, priorities and budgets; the commission needs to strengthen the relationship between state and society; the planning process will allow the state to identify the self-interest of various sectors and, where practicable, synthesise these into a common national interest; operational plans must take account of the broader national plan.
It says:
We need an agreed vision about the country's direction; an agency that can authoritatively and forcefully drive planning, monitoring and evaluation and institutional improvements; the commission will have the power to investigate under the supervision of the Minister for National Planning specific areas of policy the results of which would be presented to Parliament and prepared for decisions where appropriate; the Minister in the Presidency for National Planning will be politically accountable for delivering certain outputs; and that, in order to achieve that, he will have to be backed by a well-organised and technically capable institutional machinery infused with a high degree of authority and leverage.
There has also been a tendency to measure this proposal against the public record of the Minister responsible for its formulation. This is a mistake. I must tell this House that the Minister himself will be the first to admit that this proposal is a consequence of the ANC's policy. It was conceived with the ANC's approval and it was designed to oversee, first and foremost, the implementation of the ANC's programme of action.
The real test of this proposal, as it is with any institution, is the answer to the following question: Will the structural integrity of this institution prevent its abuse in the wrong hands of a particular individual, or in the hands of an organisation concerned with the centralisation and abuse of power at the expense of our democratic state? [Interjections.] If it was in your hands, hon member, it would be opposed more vigorously, but in the hands of Trevor Manuel, we are not too concerned, but if it is in your hands ...
... siya kuba nengxaki enkulu. [... we are going to have a big problem.]
Against this background, a political culture, which has created and continues to promote a policy of cadre deployment, deliberately blurring the line between party and state and a political programme, which is focused on centralising power, the proposal that a National Planning Commission be established cannot be supported. It is a proxy for control. In the hands of the ANC NEC, its ostensible purpose and power masks a more dangerous reality. It is a focal point for power, which, as part of the ANC's political agenda, stands in stark contrast to the federal nature of our constitutional democracy.
An important point that must be made is that the DA agrees that every government needs to plan. We welcome and fully support any government initiative in this regard; the purpose of which is to better co-ordinate and more effectively map the country's future. Identifying norms and standards and articulating strategic objectives are a critical component of effective governing, without which any administration will flounder. However, the Constitution provides certain conditions to which such planning must adhere. It clearly and expressly identifies the boundaries that define the influence of the national administration and any plan generated on its part must, in turn, adhere to those boundaries.
The proposal contained in the Green Paper fails to adequately satisfy these conditions. It fails properly to account for the ANC's policy of cadre deployment and does not attempt to describe how such an institution would not be protected from the ANC's inability to properly separate party and state, or its party political agenda.
Furthermore, there is the assumption that a single party governs all spheres of the South African state. This is not true. And while it is a constitutional imperative that all provinces "maintain essential national standards and meet established minimum standards" in rendering services, outside of that requirement, a province's plans and strategies for achieving those objectives cannot be dictated by the national administration.
Chapter 3 of the South African Constitution describes the nature of co- operative governance in South Africa in sections 41(1)(e), (f) and (g). That chapter states, among other things, that all spheres of government and all organs of state within each sphere must -
(e) respect the constitutional status, institutions, powers and functions of government in the other spheres;
(f) not assume any power or function except those conferred on them in terms of the Constitution; (g) exercise their powers and perform their functions in a manner that does not encroach on the geographical, functional or institutional integrity of government in another sphere.
As this Green Paper stands, the DA is not satisfied that these provisions will be adhered to. As such, we propose the following recommendations: That the ANC's policy of cadre deployment be abandoned. It has done irreparable harm to our democracy and if its imposition is facilitated by a National Planning Commission, the damage it has caused will become far more acute; that the Planning Commission's mandate be limited simply to the production and co-ordination of policy and not to include any powers or authority to impose that plan on any organ of state or sphere of government; that the Planning Commission's plans and strategies adhere to the constitutional requirement that no one single course of action be imposed on every sphere of government; and that under no circumstances should the process of formulating a White Paper on the National Planning Commission be by-passed or expedited.
The White Paper will set out the precise powers and the particular nature of the commission and, if those vague suggestions in the Green Paper are any indication as to the nature of these powers, they are inappropriate and, possibly, unconstitutional. Their precise nature needs to be properly defined before any considered position on this proposal can be adopted. When we pass this legislation in this House today, we must consider what its impact would be in different hands and at different times.
In conclusion, it's worth turning one last time to De Tocqueville, who makes the following observation, and I quote:
There are many people nowadays who adjust quite easily to a compromise of this kind between administrative despotism and popular sovereignty and who believe they have done enough to guarantee the liberty of individuals when in fact they have surrendered that liberty to the national government.
And so the ANC government is facing two challenges - a pragmatic and an ideological problem. What this Green Paper fails to understand, is that the pragmatic problem, a huge skills deficit and a failure to deliver, is born out of the very ideological problem it now posits as a solution - centralisation and a drive to control every aspect of the South African democratic state.
If one is to properly address those practical challenges facing our country one must first reverse the ideological drive that underpins their creation. This Green Paper achieves the very opposite. It reinforces centralisation with little or no reference to any appropriate checks and balances. I thank you. [Applause.]