Speaker and Deputy Speaker, President and Deputy President of the Republic, hon members, let me at the outset express our deepest and most heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved families of those who lost their loved ones in the two human tragedies that struck, one in Welkom and the other being Flight 447. We join them all in prayer in the spirit of human solidarity and friendship.
Nkulukumba Xipikara na Mutshamaxitulu, ndzi kombela leswaku u nga ndzi sirheleli loko va monya kumbe ku sola mbulavulo wa mina. Ni nhlamba, ndzi kombela leswaku u nga yi siveli. Ndzi tile haleno ndzi nga ehleketelanga leswaku hina va COPE hi ta fanela ku andlaleriwa masangu leswaku hi etlela eka wona. Hi amukela ntlhontlho. Tanihi vona, na hina hi bile xibakele edibini. A hi nga va nyiketi rhama lerin'wana leswaku va ri makala.
Hi pfumelelana na nawu wa Muxe lowu nge, "Tihlo hi tihlo". Swo biwa ti nga dyangi mavele swi nge endleki. Ku na xivuriso xa Xitsonga lexi nge, "N'hwari-mbirhi yin'we yi tshwa nkanga yin'wana yi bola xifuva". Hi ta vona hi n'wina Muchaviseki leswaku ya n'wina N'hwari hi yihi? Hi leyi yi nga ta tshwa nkanga, kumbe leyi nga ta bola xifuva, kumbe hi vumbirhi bya tona xana? (Translation of Xitsonga paragraphs follows.)
[Speaker and Chairperson, please do not protect me when they scorn or criticise my speech. I ask you not to prevent them from swearing either. I came here not expecting members of Cope to be treated well. We accept the challenge. We are as ready as they are. We will not bow down to intimidation.
We agree with the law of Moses that says, "An eye for an eye". We will not be punished for no reason. There is an idiom in Xitsonga which says that you cannot perform two jobs perfectly at the same time. We will see which one is your responsibility. Is it the one which is going to succeed or the one which will fall through, or is it both?]
Convention demands we grant your administration a hundred-day honeymoon period. We shall honour that convention. Consider the comments I make parked for when you come back from the honeymoon.
While listening to the President's state of the nation address, I was reminded of the following story. While walking in the street a politician got knocked down by a car. He found himself arriving in heaven and met St Peter, who then said to him, "Look, where do you want to go?" He said, "There is no difficulty; I know where I want to go. I want to go heaven." St Peter said, "No, no, no. We really have to have a discussion first. We are going to send you to some places so that you can be in a position to decide which one you want to go to."
He sends him first to hell, down the lift and there where he was: a huge golf course, caviar, and the devil and most of his friends were there. Everyone was happy. [Interjections.] Thank you very much. Then they come to fetch him and he goes to the other side. People that side were singing in the clouds. There was a harp playing and music. But everyone was concentrating. Before he realised it, 24 hours were up, and they said to him, "What do we do?". He says, "Look, I could never have said this, but really I am going to go to hell". So they send him back to hell. As he arrived the devil was sitting there, but the land was barren now. His friends were working very hard. Everywhere garbage was falling around. He said to the devil, "But, look, I was here a few days ago." The devil said to him, "At that time we were campaigning; today you voted." [Applause.]
Mr President, during the best of times, in our view, you would be hard pressed to achieve half of what is in the manifesto. It will be even harder now that we are in a recession. You said that we should cut our clothes to fit our size. That is well and good, but it seems that having been to the tailor already you may have already placed an order for a bigger cloth. Some words of wisdom to the choir master who was on stage last night. It will take more than just charm, sir, rhythm and dances and songs to get our country right.
You spoke of the need to protect and respect the Constitution, including institutions. We are happy to give you the benefit of the doubt. A good place to start may be to protect the Governor of the Reserve Bank, whom, as you have heard, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Cosatu, have said they want out. What is his sin: Implementing the ANC's policy of inflation targeting.
We welcome the commitment to increase efforts to encourage all pupils to complete their secondary education and to increase the enrolment rate to 95%. But that is not where the problem lies; it's about the quality of education, which encompasses teaching, learner ratios, classrooms, Internet connectivity, to name but a few. From where we sit, there is no plan to respond to these challenges. We are, however, happy to be proven wrong.
On your point about teachers having to teach, I hope you had a word with the SA Democratic Teachers' Union, Sadtu, who, as we speak, are out on the streets of Gauteng today instead of in the classroom even before the ink on your speech is dry. [Applause.]
We agree with you on the need for all of us to work together. Hi ta ku i timangwa loko hi vone mavala ya tona. [We will say it is pudding when we have eaten it.]
We will, in this instance, be guided by Mark Twain, who said, "My country all the time, my government when it deserves it." We agree, too, with your commitment to ensure an 80% roll-out of antiretroviral treatment therapy by 2011. It is easier said than done, sir. How will you do it when the state of the health system is as it is, with the morale being at its lowest among health workers, with many of the people being in the rural areas where the clinics have no medication, let alone antiretrovirals?
With the elections over and food parcels having dried up ...