Speech by Democratic Alliance chief whip, Ian Davidson MP, in the debate on the presidency's budget vote, June 24 2009 

The editorial of Sunday's City Press was headed "Country is crying out for your leadership Mr President".

The editorial ended with these two paragraphs:

"Zuma will engender confidence in his administration if he is seen to be doing his job. Delegating and consulting is important and well meaning but it does not mean he should not lead from the front.

Otherwise, we might start to believe that this country is indeed being run by Vavi and Mantashe".

I believe that the President did show leadership on one critically important issue in his reply to the State of the Nation debate.  Here I am referring to his statement that the stable macroeconomic policy aims of government were not going to change.

But the President needs to lead again and unpack what he means by that statement particularly in the light of the fact that South Africa is presently being buffeted by the winds of a severe recession.

We need to face these winds head on and recognise that all of us are in for a severe bout of belt tightening.

The Minister of Finance will tell you that government revenue is plunging - R10 billion below estimate for the first two months and that is before corporate tax is taken into account.

Notwithstanding this, demands on the fiscus keep rising - from ministers, parastatals, COSATU.  The reality has not sunk in.

SAA, Denel, SABC, Alexkor, the Land Bank are all queuing up to be recapitalised to the tune of many billions of Rands. Eskom and Transnet have a funding requirement of billions.  Yet when the Minister of Public Enterprises warns that unprofitable state owned enterprises could be sold off if they continued to under-perform as the state could not bail them out indefinitely, she was called to account, not by the President or Parliament, but by COSATU and the ANC Secretary General.

To whom are Ministers accountable in this government, who leads?

I find it astonishing that Mr Vavi can say of the Alliance - "we are the policymakers and the government implements.  The government doesn't lead anymore".

Nobody repudiates him.

But it is not just the public enterprises - Ministers have to get a reality check.

Projects recently put on the table by departments include free higher education, extending the child grant to 18 years old, extension of job opportunities to 500,000 individuals this year and eventually to 5 million, the demands of land reform and restitution, the cost of retirement reform and now National Health Insurance.

What is the cost to the fiscus of all this - Hundreds of Billions of Rands. We have to have a reality check in terms of what we now can afford.

I hear the Minister of Finance's intervention that we will need to prioritise - but who leads in determining the priorities? 

And with the soaring budget deficit what are we saying, higher taxes?  If so, what has become of the stable and prudent macroeconomic policies? 

I have not factored in the public sector wage demands or the additional Occupational Specific Dispensation.

We may be sympathetic to some of these demands but is does not help when COSATU's president warns of ‘explosive spates of uncontrollable labour unrest across the country'.

But it is not only fiscal policy which is being put under pressure by government's partners.  COSATU is now meddling in monetary policy; threatening to block the reappointment of the Reserve Bank Governor and endorsing mass action aimed at bringing interest rates down to what it considers acceptable levels.

It is left to the ANC Secretary General to snap that threatening strikes over wages and interest rates was not helpful when the economy is in recession.  Your leadership is required, Mr President.

Finally there was the retreat into xenophobic protectionism by COSATU when it attempted to scuttle the R22,5 billion sale of 15% of Vodacom to Vodafone.   Leadership was silent as it was left to the courts to rescue the deal sending all the wrong signals to foreign investors.

The editorial continues - "The ANC elected President Zuma as leader because it believed he was up to the task.  There is no need, it says, for Mantashe or Vavi to babysit the President or usurp his authority."

The country is crying out for your leadership Mr President.

Source: Democratic Alliance

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