Chairperson, the MF very strongly urges the Minister to look at two very important factors.
Firstly, we need to review the old stereotype housing and make South Africa a property-owning democracy. When a person owns a home or a property, they honestly feel that they belong to a nonracial democratic country. The answer is simply that we are creating a very broad-based professional middle class who are being frustrated as a result of the policies of the past. Our problem is that we are looking at addressing the imbalances of the past using the market value system.
Secondly, in 1948 when the National Party came into power, they created what is called a Land Bank. We must look at buying land and make sure most of the land for residential purposes is government land.
I suggest we service sites and sell them at a reasonable price to people, mainly from the disadvantaged community, who can get loans and erect their homes. Our problem will be that in terms of the market value system, the person who is just above the upper limit of the state-assisted housing cannot get a shelter, because the prices in the open market are too unrealistic and too high. The MF suggests that sometimes it might be necessary for government to intervene to peg the prices of vacant land and in respect of all the people who are holding valuable land. We very strongly urge that we should have a policy for a property-owning democracy. Let us declare war on market value, because market value is artificial and was created by apartheid, and is affecting black people in particular.
The MF will support the Budget Vote.