Chairperson, I don't intend or contemplate deliberately misleading this House on anything.
The question is about whether we have made contact with the banking sector in view of the fact that South Africans right across the board are losing their homes through repossessions - ordinary poor people and of course many people that look like some of us around here.
Let me state at the outset that owing to the difficult economic period the country is going through, arising out of the international economic downturn which affects the country in so far as we have a local economic recession, this phenomenon of ordinary South African citizens losing not only their homes but various other possessions - their vehicles, the contents of their households, their ability to send their children to school and losing through many other ways - is an ongoing phenomenon which is associated with an economy that is not performing that well.
We all know that our country should have had, by the year 2000, an economic growth rate of 6%. That has not been achieved. In real terms, this means that we have a deficit. This is compounded by the international events I described as well as by the current recession.
We note with sadness, of course, that because many people are losing their possessions, something has to be done. In this case, we have interacted with a number of stakeholders associated with human settlements, primarily the beneficiaries, particularly the poorest of the poor. We have also interacted with construction companies and companies that supply materials. We are all aware that as a result of the inflationary climate in which we find ourselves, the cost of these construction materials has gone up significantly.
We will be interfacing in due course with the companies involved, both the manufacturers and suppliers of such materials, so that an intervention can be made. Directly, we are in touch with the ... [Interjections.]